Now, I’m sure if you look closely you’ll notice, like me, that this headline is actually about the packaging this product comes in. But no food product, not even one for cats, should ever advertise itself as containing less cardboard than before. It’s just too easy to make the wrong connection.

I watched the Mad Men season premiere last night and was blown away. As I’d predicted, Don completely lost his cool after his divorce — fighting with clients, failing with girls and getting taken advantage of, in more ways than one. It just goes to show behind every great man, there’s got to be a great woman — or three.

I’m single again by the way, folks. Any offers greatly appreciated…

Simple Sales Copy

A brief description, followed by a call to action. That’s as much as most sales copy projects require. Simplicity works by speaking to the customer directly and quickly. Ads bother most people, they look away once they see they’re being sold something. The best advertising campaigns can sell to a customer in a single sentence. That’s why headlines, straplines and taglines are so important.

But things get a little more tricky once you’re trying to sum up a product in just a few words. After all, there’s only so many words in the dictionary, and most of them are obscure or have a meaning that’s slightly inappropriate for the context. Sure, a good copywriter will be reaching for his thesaurus from time to time, but the fact is, simplicity sells.

That’s why there’s so much overlap in contemporary campaigns. At least four gastro-pubs in my area boldly make the promise of “good, honest food” on their menus. But then again so does every tin of Britain’s leading manufacturer of dog food, Pedigree Chum.

And even that’s not original. Check out Bateman’s Ale. They’ve been promising “good honest ales” for decades.

How about Sainsbury’s? Their latest advertising campaign exhorts shoppers to “try something new today” — it’s pretty unlikely no-one’s tried that strapline before.

What makes a good strapline?

I’ve posted about what makes a good headline / strapline. Evidently, simplicity isn’t always the key to writing an original strapline, but that doesn’t mean an idea that’s been done before isn’t good. The fact is there are only so many ways to describe a product in three or four words, and every copywriter has to make the choice between originality and immediacy. Of course, true genius in headline writing occurs when a copywriter comes up with a genuinely original idea — but that was something that was much easier to do in the 60s than it is today, as content proliferates and more and more ideas have been done before.

The solution seems to be to create headlines based on lateral thinking. The Western Union “Ignore It” campaign inverts expectations — daring the customer to ignore the advert, then quickly and simply explaining why they can’t ignore a telegram. That’s easy to do on a poster, but it’s much harder when you’re coming up with a tag-line that’s linked directly to your brand name. Of course, some have become iconic. Nike’s ‘just do it’ springs to mind. But the fact is that most simple tag-lines are repetitions of earlier ideas with maybe just a little variety thrown in for good measure.

The simplicity rule holds good. Ultimately, if you can’t be original, be simple. There aren’t many ways of saying “good honest food” in three words or less. The fact is, unless they’ve got a dog, and they’re very observant, most of your customers won’t spend enough time thinking about it to ever know.

Content is King

You may have heard the expression before. In fact, if you’re a writer or a blogger, you’ve probably not only heard this phrase before, you’ve probably found yourself repeating it to quite a few clients. Perhaps it’s the “do it yourself” effect I’ve noticed where people say “I can speak English, but I can’t design or code HTML / CSS, so I’ll hire someone to do that and do the copy myself” but either way, the mentality of most businesses, individuals — and even some design agencies — is to produce the design first, then get a copywriter in to fill the Lorem Ipsum placeholder text they’ve created. But they’ve forgotten the most basic rule. Content is king.

When content comes second, it has to follow what’s come before.

If your site design is bright and bold, you have to go with bright and bold copy. If it’s elegant, formal and professional, then cheeky, quirky copy will look out of place and unprofessional. The point is, if you’ve already designed a site that looks a certain way, your copywriter is going to be limited in what he can do. Style has already been decided for him. Sometimes, even, he’s stuck to an exact word count. I don’t just mean “three hundred words per page, please” — I’m talking about this design having this headline in this font at 14px, meaning there’s room for between seven to nine words. But what if your copywriter comes up with a brilliant three or four word headline that doesn’t fit? You can’t use it. So you settle for a seven to nine word headline that’s nowhere near as good, because your design has been set in stone.

They’re not visitors, they’re readers.

With the emphasis that’s placed on design in modern sites, it’s often easy to forget that people come to read sites, not to look at them. They want to be informed, not dazzled. That’s why your copywriter is more important to the overall success of your site than you think. Remember, he’s the guy who’s telling the story. He’s the guy who’s pitching to your customers for you. He’s the guy who’s going to make sure your company sells.

I’m not underestimating the importance of good design. The best copy in the world won’t help you if your site looks unprofessional, and a bad design is far more likely to scare off potential customers than mediocre copy because when copy’s really good, people don’t notice it. That’s the sign of good copy. It fits. Effortlessly.

Getting copy to fit effortlessly into your design is hard. Restrictive designs limit what your copywriter can do. They limit what he can say about you, how much he can say, and how he says it. Getting your design to fit effortlessly around good copy is much easier.

If you’re a web designer or otherwise involved in the design industry, there’s a great post you need to read on this subject called Lorem Ipsum is Killing Your Designs that explains exactly, from a design persepctive, why it makes your life easier to get the content written first and then create a better looking design around it. They say:

The bottom line is design is an enhancement to your content. Nothing more. If you have an awesome design but junky content then no one will buy, use, read, or interact with it.

In order to sell something, a design only needs to be good. It can be any colour, any shape, any design — so long as it looks professional.
Copy is different. Sometimes copy needs to be short and punchy. Sometimes it has to be long in order to adequately describe something.

In other words: Copy is specific. Design is general.

I’m a good copywriter, and one of my most important skills is being able to take a brief at any stage and work with it, using the materials that have already been created. I’m not the kind of copywriter who has a beef with people who ask me to ‘fill in the blanks’ on their design. But I do think the marriage of copy and design works better when a copywriter and designer work on a concept, and then some draft copy, in advance, and create the design around it.

It’d be pretty useless for a copywriter to come up with a series of headlines riffing on the phrase “feeling blue” if the site design was in black and yellow. By getting the concept right first, you’re giving a great designer the ideas they need to do their job and come up with a brilliant design.

The golden rule:

Copy is specific. Design is general.
Concept first. Then design. Then fill in the blanks.

Trust me. It works.

“If your website / company / brand was a person,
what sort of person would they be?”

Copywriters thrive on detail. Often, we’re given a brief for a site, design or company that lacks character. The client has come to us because they want our copy to provide that character. But without direction, all we can do is take a stab in the dark.

The personality question gives us direction. Instantly.

There’s a number of standard questions I run through with a client when I take on their work. I’ll ask them what their USP (unique selling point) is because it’s important to find out what sort of through line they want me to push (are they the best? the cheapest? the fastest?). I’ll ask them to show me some styles of copy that they like, or copy that they don’t like, and I’ll ask them to describe their ideal customer. But I learn more from this one single question than I do from anything else.

Getting your character across.

My site’s a great example. As I’m a freelancer, my site’s design, layout and copy is designed to reflect my personality, so you get a good idea about who I am before you hire me. Your website should be the same. Ever noticed how certain types of people drive certain types of cars? Of course you have. Or how about certain types of people preferring certain breeds of dog? Try personifying your company. Give it a face. Is it rugged or smooth? What clothes would your company wear? What car would it have parked in the drive. Most importantly of all, is your company a boy or a girl? The list goes on.

The important thing is, you learn more about yourself and how you want to project your company’s image to your customers this way.

By answering these simple questions, you can learn a lot more about what makes your company great. Not only that, you learn about your weaknesses, too. After all, some types of people just aren’t attracted to certain types. By personifying your company or website, it’s easier to see who your ideal customer is. And if your company’s personality isn’t a good match for your target market, you’ve got to change.

It isn’t easy being a copywriter. Often, we’re expected to intuitively understand a client’s personality, even when we’re working across the internet with a customer who’s hundreds or even thousands of miles away. But with this one simple question, you can cut through every single layer of corporate bullshit and sales-speak, branding and marketing guff, and get down to the bare essentials of who your client is — and what they want.

Try it some time. I guarantee it’ll be the best question you’ve ever asked.

Mad Men is a pretty extraordinary show, not just because of the quality of the acting or the writing, but because it’s caused a seismic shift in the way we do business. People don’t just want some guy in a t-shirt any more — they want a silver tongued marketing genius who’s totally, 100% confident that his ideas are right.

Confidence has always been attractive.

Think about it — how many girls did you get when you were growing up and you were still afraid around women? (Yes, Mad Men has made it cool to be ever so slightly sexist again) Girls like older men because they’re more confident. They know what they like — they’re not afraid to say it. Clients are like girls, to a certain extent. They like to be told what to do. Or at least that’s what Neil Strauss says about the dating game.

And sometimes it pays to argue with your clients because they want reassurance that you truly believe in your ideas — and are willing to fight for them.

But what happens when the relationship starts to break down? Continuing the analogy, it’s okay to have a blazing row with your girlfriend. Arguments can be passionate. Unfortunately, they can also be destructive. Sometimes, you kiss and make up. And sometimes you go too far and years of hard work spent building your relationship are obliterated overnight.

I’ve got more business in the last year by fighting to get my foot in the door than I have in any other way. When a client enquiry appears in my inbox, I take a look at the lead’s marketing, business model and way of working, and I suggest to them how I could help them do things better. When I argue with them, it’s only so I can show them how I can help.

I can get pretty passionate about what I do. I’m a strong INTJ on the Myers Briggs Personality Scale and that means I’m often convinced that I’m right, even when I’m working purely on intuition — because I’m a true believer in what I do. But there’s an invisible line it’s impossible to cross, no matter how right you think you are. After all, “the customer is always right” — they’ll argue with you to a point, but the truth is, they know their business better than you do. They’ve been working on the same projects for years and years and if you’re too combative, you run the risk of chasing your clients away.

Don Draper is an excellent example of how to argue well — he takes risks and he believes passionately in what he does. Take a look at how he talks these clients into becoming “true believers” — by presenting them with a revolutionary idea.

Here’s the Don Draper secret to success:

New ways of thinking are always worth arguing for.

That’s the secret to presenting a case to your clients.

You’re not arguing with them. You’re not arguing against their way of doing business.

You’re arguing for something new – something better.

Ultimately, when you argue your case to a client, when you make a pitch for a new account, you should be arguing that your way of business brings something new to the table. That’s what clients really want. And if your arguments are good enough, you can probably show up to future meetings in jeans and t-shirt as well. After all, style is only substance up to a point. By all means, learn how to argue. But never forget when you’re in front of a client — you’re here to help.

There are a lot of so-called “social media experts” out there. The truth is there is no such thing. The majority of “social media experts” are simply people with regularly updated twitter feeds, a lot of friends on facebook they don’t really know, constantly bombarding you with requests to “like” their public page, which if you do will lead to further bombardment in an attempt to monetize your engagement with them. They’re not experts. They’re idiots.

Social media works when it delivers a service. It works when it connects people together. People are generally less interested in “connecting with brands” than they are with their friends. Advertisers are interested in connecting people with brands. There’s a difference.

I wrote some time ago that the drive towards monetizing social media was “killing the goose that lays the golden egg“. And it seems as if my prediction is starting to come true. Prominent people are deleting their facebook pages. Privacy groups and data protection watchdogs are expressing extreme concern about the way people’s privacy concerns are being ignored.

Jason Calacanis sums it up simply:

Facebook is officially “out,” as in uncool, amongst partners, parents and pundits all coming to the realization that Zuckerberg and his company are–simply put–not trustworthy.

The key to social media is trust.

When trust breaks down, people move away from your brand. Calacanis links to dozens of news articles this week all expressing a lack of trust with Facebook, citing privacy concerns. Calacanis says Facebook have spent too much time looking at how much they can potentially earn from exploiting users’ data and not enough time thinking about how much they could lose if they go down this path.

People don’t like being a target demographic.

People don’t like “hard sell” tactics. When you bombard me with requests to “like” your company, it’s as annoying as being bombarded with cold calls trying to get me to buy stuff I don’t want.

Social media is beginning to feel less like “a way to connect with friends and family” and more like a way for advertisers to target you, learn more about you, and use that information to sell to you — in other words, manipulate you.

That might not be the language of a social media “expert” – but it’s certainly what a lot of ordinary people think. When I read articles using language such as “Facebook Pages switched from “Become a Fan” to “Like” in order to lower the bar for users to engage and connect with brands” it becomes glaringly obvious that social media is becoming a hard sell — and will increasingly be rejected by users.

People don’t want to “connect with brands.” They want to connect with people. Social media is only successful when it engages individuals, groups and communities at this level.

The golden rule of advertising:

Don’t treat people like idiots.

Anyone who does is destined to fail.

Stop looking for ways to monetize social media.

Start looking for ways to genuinely connect with your customers.

Or you, too, will be destined to fail.

Last week, it was widely assumed that television was the defining factor in the campaign — with the first ever televised debates giving the Liberal Democrats, Britain’s third party, a substantial campaign boost. But that didn’t happen, either. Although “Cleggmania” saw Nick Clegg and his party gain a brief poll boost, they actually lost seats on the night. So if social media didn’t win it, it doesn’t look like television won it, either.

Social media brought very little to the campaign.

Antony Calvert’s Obama-style internet led fundraising drive, while interesting, failed to unseat the Labour incumbent, Ed Balls. But moreover The Sunlight Centre’s extremely negative online attack video, heavily publicized on local news websites with paid-for ads, failed to make an impact either.

Facebook Privacy Concerns

In fact, the only really surprising news was when Facebook put its foot in it again with a colossal breach of privacy –  encouraging facebook users to take part in a poll which showed their friends who they voted for — a massive faux pas in a democracy where the right to a secret ballot is sacrosanct.

I’ve become so concerned about Facebook privacy breaches of late I’ve stripped all information out of my profile — Facebook’s constant push to share more data publicly has gone way beyond what’s acceptable to me and this latest example of a cavalier attitude to privacy has only confirmed my concerns.

So where did it all go wrong for the web — and social media?

There’s a great analysis of how the internet affected the General Election here, from one of the BBC’s tech bloggers. He argues that social media played an important part, noting that “A YouGov survey found that a quarter of 18-24-year-olds had commented on politics via social networks.”

But there was no killer blow.

In fact, for me, the only really interesting internet news is that Guido Fawkes, arguably Britain’s leading political blogger, has finally switched allegiances and come out in favour of using Twitter — although he has railed against how it’s not a representative sample of the population at large.

I’ve held off using Twitter to market myself because I haven’t managed to find a use for it that benefits my customers / readers rather than merely advertises me — and I’m a firm believer that my marketing should provide value to customers, rather than merely push advertising / marketing on them — this blog, for example, aims to provide information rather than just sell my services.

I may have to re-think my marketing strategy in the light of one of Britain’s leading bloggers switching sides. But I’ve no intention of spamming you with ads or spending my life updating you on the minutiae of my life. I may start a twitter feed linking you to what I’m reading every day. Then again, I may find something more useful to do with my time. Like, say, work!

It’s been a bad election for social media. It hasn’t been a great election for television, either. It seems that old fashioned word of mouth and door-to-door campaigning have been the most important ways of communicating. That’s something every so-called “social media expert” should be paying attention to.

Social media isn’t the silver bullet many marketers claim it is.

It may improve campaigns, but it hasn’t replaced old-fashioned offline campaigns

…yet.

_______________________________

 
It’s hard work being a freelance copywriter. In fact, it’s just hard work working for yourself. Not only are you unable to blame the boss when you’ve had a bad day, half the time, you’re expected to work for free. Here’s why.

Clients are happy to pay you for your hard work. They’re not so happy to pay you to answer your emails, price up and send out detailed quotes, and, of course, do your taxes. Yet “admin” work takes up half my week. So I have to factor this into my prices. Every freelancer does. That’s why when people come to me with a job and say “this will only take you a couple of hours, so I’m only going to pay you for two hours work” I turn them down. I may have to spend at least a half a day looking for work, so when I get it, it needs to cover all my costs.

So how much is it fair to charge? Well, at my base rate of £150 a day for the simplest work, I’d say I can earn about £500 a week. I’m not exactly going to be a millionaire any time soon. But a thought recently occurred to me…

Should I be setting variable prices?

Some of my bigger clients are getting a bargain. They know £150 a day is cheap compared to a big London copywriting agency, marketing agency or similar. They’d be happy to pay £300 a day — and they’d still be getting a bargain.

But jobs like this only come along rarely. The majority of the time I’m dealing with SMEs on a limited budget who can’t afford big agency prices.

So the question is, is it fair for me to set variable rates,
charging those willing to pay the most more than those who can’t pay much?

I don’t know the answer — that’s why I’m asking you.

There’s something distinctly unfair about charging people more than others for the same thing.

For example:

A friend and I recently tried to go bowling at the Lakeside Superbowl, Chichester. We were told by a very grumpy member of staff that we couldn’t have the deal advertised on the website as we hadn’t booked a day in advance — even though there were plenty of lanes available. We were told we’d have to pay £40 between us for four games, rather than the £16 in total the website suggested. Naturally, we refused to pay, and left.

The bowling alley could have had £16 off us. Yet they ended up with nothing.

I’m faced with a similar problem:

I do a great job (if I do say so myself) and I’m pretty sure that some of my clients would think £250 a day is value for money. But I know that some of my clients with small budgets wouldn’t be able to pay these rates. Is it fair for me to charge big clients £250 and small clients £150?

The answer is that it probably isn’t. I factor in the complexity of the work when giving a quote, and that includes the number of expected redrafts and amount of client time in meetings, phone calls and emails I’ll expect. Bigger companies tend to be more demanding, so naturally I’ll charge slightly more because they’ll take up more of my time.

Big jobs only come along every so often — and I find myself doing smaller jobs for companies on limited budgets 3/4 of the time. I couldn’t in all conscience set variable prices because I don’t think my clients would stand for it — just like I wouldn’t stand to pay full price at the bowling alley.

So I’m faced with two options:

Either charge “standard” rates for a senior copywriter, which is at least £250 a day, and lose some business (but have more time to go after ‘big’ clients) or carry on charging £150 a day and get more work more often, but risk seriously undercharging big clients who’d gladly pay £300 a day.

This is the freelancer’s dilemma. It’s a dilemma that most businesses face, too. Price is an indicator of quality. By being cheaper than my competition, I run the risk of looking cut-rate, and scaring off bigger customers. But if I raise my prices and don’t get enough big customers, I end up earning much less.

For now, I’m content to keep my prices within the £150-£200 a day rate, which is definitely cheap. But as my portfolio continues to improve and I find myself landing bigger and bigger clients, I find myself thinking that at some point, I’m going to have to start charging more.

After all, I don’t have a boss who’s going to give me a pay rise. As a freelancer, I have to decide that, too.

It’s more important to sound natural than to be clever.

F Scott Fitzgerald famously started out in advertising and came up with the slogan “we keep you clean in Muscatine” for an Iowa based laundry service. While he may have been the greatest writer of the 20th century, he wouldn’t have made it very far in the advertising world. Headlines like this are far too glib. Soon, they begin to grate. It’s possible to be “too” clever.

Good straplines find a great balance between being clever and being helpful, positive, and eye-catching.
They should stand out by being sharp, with carefully understated wordplay.

My favourite strapline out there at the moment belongs to the House of Fraser:

Yes, it’s a pun. But it’s a good one. A good pun doesn’t get tired the more you hear it, and every time I shop here, I look at that strapline and go “yup, that’s good.” It amuses, it explains, it entices but most of all — it’s positive.

Negativity never works.

A while ago I was asked to create a strapline for Skint.com, a website offering short term loans. Their existing headline, “it’s no fun with no money” simply didn’t work. Why? The use of the negative, twice. Why depress people by telling them something’s no fun — even if your site promises to fix that problem. Be positive. Look to the future, not the past.

Here’s the slogan I came up with for them.

You may have noticed it already in my portfolio. But it’s one of my favourites, and I thought it deserved a little explanation.

It’s positive. It’s proactive. It feels natural.

Most importantly of all, it paraphrases the three most important words in copywriting: we can help.

A copywriter’s job is to introduce his client to their customers in such a way as the customers know that the client is able to help them. They want to feel able to come to the client and know their needs will be satisfied, their demands will be met.

That’s also why ‘Temptation on every level’ works well. It tantalizes, it promises… there’s an aura of mystique with the feeling of a promise soon to be fulfilled.

Still think any old strapline will do? Think again. If your budget is limited, you’re better off paying a copywriter a day’s work to come up with one simple sentence that sums up your business than producing five or six hundred words of sales text.

Good headline writers are hard to find. That’s because good headline writing is the hardest skill a copywriter will ever have to master.

A good copywriter writes sales-focused copy.

What does that mean? Well, here’s an example. Client A comes to me with Product A, and it’s the best product ever (so he thinks). He’s already come up with a great description of Product A to use on his website. But nobody’s buying.

Let’s call Product A Product Awesome. I’ll let you make up your own mind what Client “A” stands for. Client A says something to me like this. “Product Awesome is the most awesome thing at what it does ever, it’s like an iPhone and an iPad and a can opener all in one and it can also walk your dog. Everyone should want one!”

To which I reply, “Great. So why isn’t your copy telling people why they need this product.”

I’m usually met with blank stares from my client or the simple, weak reply. “Because it’s awesome?” they ask.

Great sales copy has to convince people they need your product.
Just because you think it’s obvious why your product is great,
doesn’t mean everyone else does.

So that’s lesson 1. A good copywriter’s job is to convince, not merely to explain.

Here’s lesson 2. It’s the exception to lesson 1.

A good copywriter knows when to back off. When to stop with the hard sell.

Client “A” comes back to me with his revisions. Based on what I’ve told him, every other line in his copy is now “buy my product! buy my product! buy my product!” — Client A has failed again.

Calls to action are worthless unless you give your customer a reason to call.

I like to use what I call the Jay McInerney approach. One of my favourite books, Bright Lights, Big City, employs a second person narrator. In other words, “you.” Take a look at the opening paragraph –

“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, but the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge… All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, might not.”

And so it goes on. But wow! What an opening paragraph! Instantly, the narrator puts you in his shoes. And that’s the second secret to sales focused copy.

You need to put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
And you need to make your customer imagine himself using your product.

In fact, using the second-person is one of the strongest sales copywriting techniques. “It’s three am. You’re getting tired. You need a can of Red Bull” etc…

Empathizing with your reader and showing you understand his needs is a better tactic than the hard sell. When Client A comes back to me with copy that reads “buy this product! buy this product! buy this product!” he’s getting it wrong. You is a meeting of “I and He”. It is a merger of writer and reader. It’s the best way of selling subtly. In short, you’re showing your reader why your product is awesome, not telling him.

The third secret to successful copy really separates the men from the boys. Or, more accurately, the professionals from the amateurs. It’s knowing when to break the rules.

In some circumstances, describing a product will sell it better than trying to convince the reader to buy it. Sometimes, trying to empathize with the reader will seem cloying and sickly. Between one in ten times and one in a hundred, you’ll actively repel a reader using the above techniques.

A good copywriter writes copy for a large number of different products and services. You may think you know your audience, but without the experience of knowing what works and what doesn’t, reading the best “rulebook” in the world will still leave you selling short.

Experience is the only way to get better at writing good copy. It can take years before you write instinctively, rather than writing to the rules. That’s why great copywriters can command large sums of money for doing what you think you can do — write simple words in plain English.

You’ve got two choices. Either take a couple of years to learn how to write persuasively, or pay someone else to do it this week. Faced with this choice, most clients choose to pay someone to do it for them. But that’s not the best way to good copy, either.

Don’t employ. Collaborate.

I’ve found I work best with clients who write well, who know their product and their audience, but who need a second opinion. I love working collaboratively. That’s the very last secret to writing good copy. Don’t employ a copywriter and then expect him to know everything about your business. He knows nothing except how to sell. Write well about your own business and then give it to a copywriter to turn into sales-focused copy.

When you hire a freelance copywriter, you’re not really employing a writer. You’re employing a translator. You’re asking a professional to translate what you know (“my product is awesome”) into something your audience can understand (“his product is awesome, and here’s why. Can’t you just see yourself using it around the house now?”).

A good copywriter takes what you want to say and finds a way to say it better.

]]> http://allday.cc/blog/how-to-write-sales-focused-copy/feed/ 2 http://allday.cc/blog/turning-your-weakness-into-strength/ http://allday.cc/blog/turning-your-weakness-into-strength/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:22:00 +0000 al http://allday.cc/?p=746 So, it’s April Fool’s Day. And along with the usual plethora of tech-related pranks (well documented by TechCrunch) this spoof by The Guardian really caught my eye. In my last post, I talked about negative campaigning in politics, and how only a campaign based on hard fact is good enough to go on the attack.

But how do you counter-attack a negative campaign?

The Guardian’s April Fools joke may point us in the right direction.

OK, so it’s an obvious spoof. But…

In fact, on seeing this poster, most people just say “what plans?” The Conservative Party are losing ground because although the governing Labour Party is unpopular, nobody really knows quite what the Tories stand for. Their response? The campaign’s gone negative.

It’s beeing touted in the blogosphere that marketing agency Euro RSCG have been sidelined — due to poor performance — and the old Conservative stalwart, Saatchi, has been brought back. The above posters are examples of M+C Saatchi’s new work. They’re simple attack ads. And, undoubtedly, the best attack ads have a simple message. They paint the election in terms of a stark contrast — “change” or “five more years of this incompetent idiot”. What’s clever about them is that unlike the first poster above, they don’t lead the viewer to ask what the Conservatives would actually do better. They simply state “anything’s better than Brown” — which is a pretty negative bottom line.

The question is, will it work?

The Saatchi brothers know what they’re doing. They’re an agency whose work most, if not all of us, are in awe of. But remember this dud?

Yup, another Saatchi creation. Remembered for all the wrong reasons. It certainly didn’t stop Blair getting in. Or getting in again. Or again after that.

So what makes negative campaigning work?

Well, I think it has to resonate with people. It has to capture a mood — I don’t think it’s possible for a negative campaign to change a media narrative. But if the undercurrent of public feeling is going one way, it can’t hurt to remind people. That’s why, even though I’m loath to see the Conservatives embark on a negative campaign without spelling out exactly what they’ll do better, I think it’ll work.

The new Saatchi campaign uses facts. Brown was an incompetent chancellor — his selling of Britain’s gold reserves was, to put it in plain English, the most monumental cock-up of government finances of our generation. Announcing it to the markets before doing it — thus ensuring the worst possible price — was plain stupidity Brown shouldn’t be allowed to get away with.

Negative campaigns need to be backed by facts.

That’s why ‘New Labour, New Danger’ didn’t work. It was speculative. The wider lesson we can all learn, whatever we’re marketing, is that facts work. Facts need to be at the core of every good argument. It’s not enough to say you’re better. You have to show people why. A positive campaign can tap into a feeling or express a mood. People don’t necessarily need to be sold facts to be told something will make them happy. In short, you don’t ‘argue’ happiness. You persuade.

But if your campaign is negative, showing people why your opponent is worse than you… nothing less than brutal, hammer-blows of cold, hard fact will do.

Edit: Monday 29th — Michael White of the Guardian has written a very similar article today, it’s good, check it out — Negative advertising works, but only when it strikes a chord with what voters already think

Anyway, between personal, family and business reasons, I’ve clocked up several thousand miles in her this month. As I scraped another pothole, I said to my passenger, “we’ve really got to stop and put some air in these tyres.”

You can’t charge for fresh air.

My friend said “it’s twenty pence at Tesco to use the air machine now.” So I drove another mile to the next petrol station. While I was there I filled the tank. A transaction putting two hundred times more than twenty pence in the petrol station’s coffers.

The point of my anecdote?

Some things are better off given away for free. By trying to charge me a nominal sum for something that’s effectively free elsewhere, they lost out on a much more valuable transaction.

Information is a little like air.

Sure, you can charge for it. But the chances are, unless you’re a university professor, you don’t make your living out of it. The chances are you know a lot about what you do. If you’re a baker, I bet you know some great cake recipes. But you don’t make a living selling the recipes. You make a living selling cakes.

That’s why a blog is a great place to give away information and get people interested in what you’re really selling. It seems like common sense, but it still amazes me how many people aren’t interested in giving out information. They want their blog to be a sales pitch. It isn’t. Or else they want to charge for the content. Why? It’s the internet. Sooner or later, you’ll find the information you’re looking for. For free.

The blogs I read the most very rarely tout for business. They’re the air pumps at the petrol station. They’re a service given away for free.

Sound pretty basic to you? It is. But it’s amazing how many people still don’t blog regularly. Here’s a few good reasons to blog:

• People will be more likely to recognise your authority on your subject. Give away great recipes to try at home? Then people are going to be more likely to think you bake great cakes.
• The personal touch. The internet can seem pretty impersonal. By blogging regularly, you’re letting potential customers get to know you better, increasing the chances of a conversion or a sale. Your blog should never be dry. Your blog should convey you as well as your ideas.
• Keywords, keywords, keywords. The more you blog about things relevant to your business, the more keyword-rich pages you’ll have showing up in Google. Update your blog once a week and in six weeks you’ve doubled the size of a six page portfolio site.
• Traffic. If you write well enough, people will keep on coming back. More than that, you can use your blog as a place to test out new ideas about your business. For example, I recently asked my readers if they thought I should be on Twitter. They didn’t. So I’m not.

But, you say… “I just don’t like the idea of giving away something for free! It’s a lot of hard work and I’m still not convinced I’ll get anything out of it.”

Most people are stuck in the real-world mindset that something-for-nothing is a bad deal. On the internet, it’s the only deal.

It’s why pay-walls around traditional newspaper sites never work. Like my earlier example, I’ll drive an extra mile to avoid the very small charge — and end up spending a lot more elsewhere.

Draw people in with your blog. You don’t need to sell them something directly.

Your blog is the biggest and best publicity tool in your arsenal.

It’s the best marketing strategy you’ve got.

You should be updating it more.

]]> http://allday.cc/blog/whats-the-point-of-blogging/feed/ 1 http://allday.cc/blog/scribe-wordpress-plugin-a-review/ http://allday.cc/blog/scribe-wordpress-plugin-a-review/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:05:40 +0000 al http://allday.cc/?p=701 As a copywriter, I often get asked to make my work SEO compliant. In short, people are relying on me to know what works in terms of SEO — where should keywords go, and how often should they be repeated? Until now, I’ve relied more or less on a working knowledge of search engine optimization best practices I’ve learned from working with web designers, bloggers and other copywriters. This week, I’ve started using Scribe — a Wordpress SEO plugin developed and promoted by Brian Clark of Copyblogger.

What does it do?

In short, Scribe…

But it’s the fact that Twitter is so immediate that makes it so dangerous. It’s like having a gun with no safety catch. If you hold it in your hand, if you play with it, if, in short, you don’t know what you’re doing, sooner or later it’s bound to go off.

And that’s exactly what happened to Labour politician David Wright yesterday.

In a tweet, David Wright MP referred to opposition politicians as “scum sucking pigs” — hardly insult of the century, you might think, but in Britain the political system is still pretty formal, in fact you can’t even call an opposing MP a liar without the speaker of the house demanding an apology and a retraction. Protocol is a big thing in British politics, which comes as a great surprise to all of us, even in the UK, as the majority of the population probably do think that all politicians are scum sucking pigs, regardless of political persuasion.

So it didn’t take long for a storm to brew up in this particular MP’s teacup. But where he really damned himself was his defence. David Wright argued that someone had edited his tweets. As political blogger Guido Fawkes was quick to point out, you can’t edit a tweet once it’s been posted. David Wright was quickly caught out and accused by a much wider community of being a liar — with proof.

He’d compounded his initial mistake. He tweeted without thinking, then he paid a further price the next day by not understanding the technology he was using.

I’ve said before that Twitter is very much a double-edged sword. Used well, it can be an immensely powerful marketing tool. But used badly, it can be a PR disaster for you as an individual or as a company. Even when you think you’re using it ‘correctly’ it’s too easy to be seen as spamming twitter with your marketing if you don’t contribute to the community. There’s nothing worse than someone constantly talking about themselves, constantly trying to push their services, trying to make you pay attention to them — so whenever you’re tweeting, you really do need to give extra special thought to what you say.

I’m still not on Twitter, because I haven’t found the time for it. Between Facebook for status updates, RSS for news and Tumblr for fun, I haven’t found a reason to tweet. The designer of this site wants to add a ‘re-tweet this blog’ button to make it easier for a wider audience to read, digest, and disagree with my ramblings. I’m tempted to say yes. But other than that, how do you think I should be using Twitter?

Apart from occasionally updating you on my latest blog posts and perhaps sharing links from other sites I find interesting (which I already do on Tumblr), what would you want me to tweet about? The fact that I haven’t been able to answer that question satisfactorily is what keeps me from using it at the moment.

Unlike David Wright MP, I like to think before I open my mouth. And right now, I think I’d just be spamming you with links about me and my business, and in the long run I think that would do me more harm than good.

So come on, folks. I’m asking for your advice. Would you want me to tweet, and if so, what would you want to read about? I’m open to suggestions.

Love it or loathe it, Valentines Day is the mandated time of the year when we’re supposed to make a pitch for our lover’s heart. Some say it with flowers, with a special breakfast… or even a special ring to surprise their loved ones. But what if you’ve got something more to say? What if you’ve always struggled to explain how much someone means to you?

A love letter could be just the thing.

So what can a copywriter teach you about writing a love letter?

Well, you’ll find that all the basic advice that applies to good copywriting applies to writing a good love letter. Doubly so:

Avoid cliche.

If you wanted to say something trite and unoriginal, you could’ve sent them a store-bought card, right? The point of a love letter is that it’s personal. Be original. Be truthful. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Like most pitches, battles are lost or won over the issue of trust.

Don’t go overboard.

‘Purple’ prose, overwritten prose, that’s full of outrageous metaphors or overly descriptive passages, always strike the reader as untrue and distract from your overall message. Don’t say “thou art lovelier than the gorgeous burnt ochre dawn of a summer’s day” if what you mean is “I want to screw your brains out”. Say “I can’t control myself when I see you. Your eyes burn into my very soul and I need to feel your lips pressed against mine.” It’s better to be honest and passionate than try to sound like a 16th century poet.

Passion is good.

You’re not writing an essay, you’re not going to be marked out of ten. You don’t have to set out a rational argument for why your lover should love you. Nothing kills romance like the cold steel blade of logic. So no bullet point lists, no detailed explanations of why you’re in love. Love is there to be felt, not thought about. There’s a reason Mr Spock never gets any Valentine’s cards. Open up to your instincts.

Show off.

Okay, this might sound like a contradiction, but don’t forget, a love letter is just a pitch. You’re trying to prove yourself to your beloved. And that means playing to your strengths. Fantasy is good. Include them in it. Tell them how much better you are as a person when they’re in your life. Tell them all the crazy things you’ve dreamed about doing with them. Make sure that they know that they’re the missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle of your life. But whatever you do, don’t sound like a sap. Put yourself in their shoes. What would you want to read in a love letter written to you?

As for us copywriters, what can we learn from you lovers?

Copywriting is a fine art. So is writing a good letter. But moreover, the thing they really have to have in common is passion. It’s more important that the words are true than perfect. It’s more important that they convey enthusiasm than sound strict and formal. It’s important to make a personal connection. In many ways, the love letter is the ultimate sales pitch. This Valentine’s day, how are you going to market yourself?

This lonely old writer will be staying in with a good book. As the Beautiful South once sang, “write your love letters on rice paper, at least you’ll feed the poor.”

But when it comes to writing, everyone’s a DIY merchant. Everyone thinks, well, I speak English, so I can write well. That’s why it’s hard for a copywriter to make it in this modern climate. People will happily shell out for web design, because it’s easier than learning HTML. But English is a language everyone understands. Or so they think.

I studied hard to get my MA in creative writing, and I’m an expert copywriter. I know the English language inside out. I know what works and what doesn’t. I know how to turn a phrase and how to turn your customers on to your services.

The hard part is convincing you to think the same way I do.

It’s hard to sell your services as a writer. That’s why there are so many beautiful websites containing awful copy. It’s the bit everyone does themselves to cut costs. Why pay a writer when you can do it yourself?

The truth is, most people can’t write very well at all. Writing well for an audience is an art, and it’s as hard as fixing a car or a broken boiler. Okay, maybe it’s not brain surgery, but like most things, you get a better result when you call in the professionals.

Dustin Curtis provides an excellent example of how a well written call to action can improve your response rate. By changing his call to “you should follow me on twitter here” from “I’m on twitter” he improved his response rate from 4.70% to 12.81%

That’s a threefold increase just by crafting a better written sentence. Heck, even adding ‘here’ to the end of the sentence resulted in a 3% increase.

That’s the power of good writing. A good copywriter can take your message and sell it to your customers. In short, he’s talking their language. Are you?

The chances are good you could vastly improve your marketing right now by hiring a professional writer, like me. The question is, why don’t you?

You should get in touch with me. Here.

You go on the attack.

There’s no point launching a ‘new and improved’ campaign — nobody believes those three trite words anyway. It’s not enough to win back people who don’t trust your brand. You could change the name. But if you’re a big company, that gets expensive.

So Domino’s Pizza tried a different strategy. They attacked their own brand for being rubbish.

Their honest admission that their pizzas didn’t measure up to the standards of other takeaway franchises got people talking. It’s an act of public contrition. Then, and only then, once we’re convinced that _they_ know there’s a problem, were they able to convince us that they might be doing something about it.

Call it a relaunch, a reboot, whatever you want, the premise is that you have to admit your past failures and actively attack your own brand’s reputation in order to make progress. But is it really the best way to wipe the slate clean?

Gerald Ratner notoriously claimed his products were “crap” — and his brand reputation never recovered. Similarly the idea that drove the invention of “new” Coke was that the old Coca-Cola was inferior. It didn’t work.

Criticising your own product and admitting past failures are a last ditch measure — and I think you’d have to be pretty desperate to try them. That’s why it’s so interesting a lot of Labour party supporters in the UK are suggesting Labour adopt a “Domino’s Pizza” strategy, owning up to their failures in the past 12 years of government and admitting they’ve made mistakes. The problem is, this is the same strategy they used to get into government, rebranding their past as “old” Labour and their new policies as “new” Labour.

And that’s the biggest problem with this strategy. Assuming it works at all, as it did for Labour in 1997, it won’t work again now. If you criticise your past product as being a load of rubbish and somehow manage to convince people that you’ve changed… and then you serve up a product that’s still no good… you can’t get away with the same trick twice. You’re lucky to get away with it once.

So is it a good strategy? It’s very high risk, and can only really be combined with a very definite improvement in your product in the future. You only get one shot at it.

Personally, I’ve never had a problem with the taste of Domino’s Pizza. My problem is the price. Sure, their pizzas aren’t great. But it’s the fact that they cost twice as much as a not-great pizza from the local takeaway that gets to me.

If you can’t compete on quality, compete on price. If you can’t compete on either… it’s game over. Rubbishing your own brand is a last-ditch manoeuvre. If it fails, you’ve got nothing left.

A while back, I suggested Tiger ought to try humour to deflect some of the criticism about his adultery. You know, give a lovely smile and a “who, me?” shrug of the shoulders. After all, anyone who’s ever read Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction knows that rakish charm can be very effective — like it or not, he argues, women love a cad.

This response is better. Tiger’s a number 1 sportsman. Okay, so it’s golf, but he’s still got something to prove. This photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz is a raw demonstration of power, defiance, and masculinity.

It’s a major repositioning for the Tiger Woods brand. It’s also a sure-fire success. It’s a powerful statement of confidence.

And confidence is always attractive.

He’ll alienate some (“disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” types) but ultimately, we’re all in awe of someone who comes out fighting. As a writer it pains me to say this, but sometimes, the best statements are made without a single word.

Remember this blast from the past?

Well, a good campaign does stick in the mind. You have to look at the Tories’ latest offering and wonder what they’re thinking…

I suppose it fits with their new image. It’s caring and compassionate while remaining simple and direct. Look at David Cameron — the man who would be king — he’s got big, puppy dog eyes and he looks… like an ordinary human being, in contrast to the camera-unfriendly, dodgy looking Brown.

But it’s not high impact. In fact, it looks kind of weak. Political Betting has a good analysis of the campaign here; suggesting the Conservatives have money to burn. But the fact is, they don’t need to burn it on dead trees. The web is undoubtedly the new political battleground. A lot’s changed in five years. Blogging, viral video… yes, even twitter. As we’ve all discovered, sometimes the best campaigns are free. Make no mistake, this is a socially augmented campaign. They only need one billboard (this one’s outside News International’s UK offices) to make a campaign go viral.

The Conservatives know this. That’s why they’ve set up their own social media networking site, myconservatives.com — I haven’t seen much mention of it, to be honest. I think it hits the problem all minority social media has. The big boys are on Facebook and Twitter. Nobody wants to take the time to use a micro-sized, single-issue site. If you ask me, they’d be better off setting up one big facebook group, or even designing a facebook-compatible app. Why not a simple rosette to show your support?

Obviously, the Tories know what they’re doing. They’ve created a campaign that’s subtle and starkly avoids the negativity of their previous campaigns. Cameron, borrowing heavily from Obama, is promoting a message of change, of healing, of compassion.

He’s also relying heavily on himself. It’s a bold move, putting your face next to a promise. Maybe that’s the idea. People trust Cameron — more than they trust his party. It’s a potential weakness, though, and it’ll be interesting to see if Labour can capitalise on it. The problem is, it’s hard to run a negative campaign against Mr. Clean.

I think the Conservatives are being very astute. They’ve covered all the angles. They’re going to look fresh-faced and modern. In short, they’re promoting a message of change.

Just like a certain successful US president.

Happy holidays everyone. It’s been a great year.

Photo by my friend Spencer (here), check out the best and worst agency Xmas cards here (and the very best here) and remember: Rage at no.1 this year proved one thing: it’s been a really great year for viral advertising (and, err, Sony Records).

See you all in the New Year!

Of course, the jokes are already all over the place. Nike are changing their slogan to “Just Screw It” — and Durex are going to release a new range of condoms that “bring out the tiger in you!” — but jokes like this actually make a good point. Why the hell should this so-called scandal really affect Woods’ ability to to sell?

Frankly, “rich man has multiple affairs” is about as surprising a headline as “snow falls in winter” — there’s more than a whiff of schadenfreude about this, and I suppose America has always had more puritanical mores than us in the UK. But really — there’s no such thing as bad publicity and unless Woods built his reputation on being a family man endorsing family products, I can’t see the problem.

Accenture have dropped him, only proving that accountants really are completely dull. Tag Heuer are standing by him*. Presumably they’ll be the preferred watch of playboys this time next year. Good on ‘em – there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and it’s even better when it’s completely free.

The truth is that this is a pretty hysterical scandal. And I mean hysterical in the meaning of ‘hilariously funny’ as much as I mean hysterically over-wrought and hyped up by a press enjoying a mini-silly-season around the holidays. As an ad man, all I see are opportunities. Tiger could turn all this around in an instant with a well placed joke, by showing he’s not too big to laugh at himself. An ad for one of his sponsors that spoofs himself could be just the thing. Okay, so he had a pretty clean-cut image before. That has to change. But really, I’m no more surprised that a wealthy, famous young man likes a bit on the side than I was surprised by the ‘revelations’ that Kate Moss enjoys the occasional line of coke. Supermodel takes drugs? The press can write as many column inches as they like, they’re still not going to shock anyone.

So long as the column inches keep on churning out, so long as the free publicity train keeps on rolling, someone, somewhere, will aways find a way to make money out of it.

Come out of hiding, Tiger. And when you face the press for the first time, make sure you get paid a million for endorsing Tiger Brand Condoms. This press feeding frenzy is nothing more than the media’s way of making money out of you. You’re a celebrity. Keep on doing what celebrities have done since time immemorial. Sell.

It’s not like anyone’s going to think any less of you.

*Edit 18th Dec – Tag have dropped Tiger. I think it’s an extraordinary sign of weakness when a brand does this. It’s like not sticking by your mates, you know?

*Edit 24th Dec – Another source says Tag are going to stick by Tiger. Good on ‘em.’ I definitely don’t think his recent actions are going to harm his ability to sell alpha-male watches…

Bill Werbeniuk, a legend from the 80s

It’s also seen better days. The 1980s are regarded as the heyday of snooker, with the world championship final in 1985 being watched by 18.5 million people. Despite being more of a minority pastime here these days, it’s become big in China — with up to 50m regularly tuning in to watch matches. So there’s life in the old sport yet.

In fact, it’s fair to say that snooker has an image problem. It’s too slow, too quiet, not exciting enough for most people. Even ardent fans from the 80s argue that snooker isn’t what it used to be, that there aren’t any ‘characters’ in the sport, that it’s become boring.

I love snooker. But even I have to admit sometimes it’s a little slow.

The UK championship kicked off this week. I caught Snooker’s number 1, Ronnie O Sullivan’s opening match. At times, somnolent didn’t quite describe it. Nor did sleepy, slow, tired or dull. There was even a five minute pause while a little old lady was assisted to a glass of cold water. I’m a purist. These pauses don’t bore me. Nor does a long tactical frame. But for most people, snooker’s simply too slow.

At one point, snooker was considered an exciting sport with a working-class image. But somewhere the novelty wore off. Now it’s considered a slow, boring sport with little to no image. With the exception of “Rocket” Ronnie, few people outside the game can name its stars.

Yet other similar sports seem to do well. Golf is watched by millions, even though nothing happens at all. And darts, a sport with a similar image to snooker, is still flourishing.

Change is afoot.

Last week, the chairman of the governing body of World Snooker, Sir Rodney Walker, was ousted, with legendary 80s player Steve Davis and Barry Hearn, chairman of the Professional Darts Corporation, co-opted onto the board.

The idea is that the new board will come up with a way of breathing new life into the game. Steve Davis is a popular, public figure. And Barry Hearn has kept darts alive.

How are they going to do it?

There’s a number of suggestions on the table. Among them are plans for a ‘world tour’ and more ranking tournaments, as well as plans for a faster version of the game containing fewer red balls, hoping that a faster game might do for snooker what 20 20 did for cricket.

I think the answer’s simpler.

Celebrity sells.

It’s true that snooker doesn’t have the same characters it used to. But it’s hard for players to express their character around the table, when there are so many formal rules. The players don’t get enough exposure. Unless you follow the sport, you’ll never see them.

I know nothing about golf, but I do know who Tiger Woods is. And frankly, I don’t think revelations about his womanizing are going to harm his career. If anything, he’s given his profile a massive, manly boost. He’s put golf on the front pages, too. Don’t change the game, change the image.

Back in the early 90s there was an enormously popular game show called Big Break, that paired snooker players with members of the public in a chance to win prizes. The players still played on a snooker table and were given a chance to show off their skills, but also their character. It’s remembered with the same fondness as Bullseye, which certainly kept darts in the public eye.

Snooker is a great game. It just doesn’t provide many opportunities for self-promotion. Putting snooker players back in the media spotlight off the table, by bringing back programmes like Big Break, would regenerate interest in the game, and give the players a chance to develop their character.

I look forward to seeing how the new, faster game pans out. It’s true the game needs to move forward. But the best way to bring Snooker back in the public eye isn’t by changing the game. It’s by giving the players more exposure off the table.

There were a couple of reasons for the change. Mostly, if I’m honest with you, it’s because I’ve noticed that while clients seem to prefer the image of the chain-smoking, three-day-stubble sporting writer on the page, when you show up at a 9am meeting looking like you’ve been on a week long bender and reach for your already depleted pack of Camels, they get a bit annoyed. So my new photos look a lot more like the way I look in real life — during working hours, at least.

This is what the old home page looks like:

and here is the new one:

I’m a big fan of the amazing Mad Men, the best TV show about advertising, ever. There’s some quite interesting anecdotal evidence about how “the Sterling Cooper effect” is changing people’s perceptions of how a creative should look and act. So I decided to suit up. But I lost the cigarette. They may want you to look sharp, but smoking in front of clients is no more acceptable than asking them if they’d like to split a pint of scotch (I haven’t actually tried this — I’m just guessing).

I also listened to my own advice and simplified my copy. Statistically, I have a bounce rate of about 36% — meaning that I lose a third of my readers after the first page. This is actually a slightly better than average statistic. Count how often you close a website down after viewing just one page. I bet it’s more than you thought.

The point is, I’ve pretty much only got one page to tell every visitor to my site who I am and what I do.

That’s how the web works –
You have to sell yourself in a second. Two seconds is too late.

Personally, I think both ideas are great. And they’re both definitely “me” — but they also project a different image.

So far, the feedback I’ve had has been positive. And prospective client enquires seem to be on the up. But I’m interested in what everyone else thinks. I’ve explained my reasons for the re-brand.

But it’s not SEO. SEO involves vast amounts of repetition, as well as angling in every possible keyword you can on any given page so you can be sure you’re covering as many bases as possible. It seems to me that people want their sites to get searched for, but they don’t want “SEO copy” any more. People have moved on.

Fact: what looks good to a search engine doesn’t look good to the naked eye.

People want sales copy. Not SEO copy.

Yet they still want organic traffic from google and the like.

This is what I advise my customers:

1. Get your <title> right. Load it with keywords. It makes an enormous difference to search engines, and people don’t read it much.

2. If you’re using wordpress, use the All in one SEO pack — that’s where you need SEO copy. The SEO pack will  handle your title, description, and keywords (meta tags).

3. While you’re at it, make sure your permalinks are SEO friendly. It’s another good place to add a keyword or two.

4. Blog. If you have a six page brochure / portfolio site but you blog once a week, in six weeks you’ll have doubled the size of your site. That’s twice as many pages with keywords about your business people will potentially search for. Not only that, it’ll encourage increased traffic, repeat visits and inbound links to your site. All these things will help raise your site’s search engine ranking.

5. Use localization where possible. If you’re based in a small to medium sized town with little competition (but at least some demand) put your location somewhere prominent. You’re the only game in town. Exploit that fact. It’s also wise to submit your site to Google Local where possible, so people searching for your service who live in your area will see it automatically.

That’s five suggestions. And none of them have been “use SEO copywriting” to pad out your site. Sure, adding lots of keywords, etc, might make a difference. But it will negatively affect user experience when people actually start visiting your site.

People like short, snappy informative headlines. They also like originality — which SEO copywriting prohibits.

It’s a cost-benefit analysis situation. As far as I’m concerned, concentrating too much on SEO ruins the look and feel of your site. And, with the five SEO strategies in place I’ve mentioned above, you shouldn’t ever need to use it.

So the short answer?

Yes, SEO matters. But BTL style SEO copywriting is an ineffective strategy.

The most validatory statistic from the poll toward my view that Twitter ‘ain’t all that’, is that 76% of the British population said they’d never used Twitter and, also, had no intention to use it in the future. In other words, Twitter is a communication medium that encourages groupthink whilst simultaneously making the group believe their views are having influence on a wider population when in fact they’re all just shouting at each other in a locked and sound-proof room.

If 3/4 of the population aren’t using it, and have no intention of using it, it’s a severely limited medium. Sure, it’s great at getting in touch with that 1/4 of the population. But only a fool would put it at the heart of their marketing strategy. When you rely on twitter to do your marketing for you, you’re broadcasting only to a limited number of people with limited appeal. As Dizzy puts it, ‘a locked and soundproof room’.

The prospect poll shows that most twitter users are left leaning liberals. What would a more detailed survey show? That they were more likely to be vegetarians, that they were against nuclear power? That they were more likely to be anti-capitalist hippies? Probably not. But Twitter only reaches a certain type of person. Personally, I think it’s great for tech launches and reaching people who work within the technology / online industries. But that’s as far as it goes.

Because nobody else uses it.

It’s simple. Spend less money.

But hang on — if you spend less, won’t your payback fall too? Couldn’t your ROI actually fall if you stop spending money on social media marketing?

Of course it could. But that’s where most people are missing the point of social media. I don’t think there’s any specific correlation between the size of your investment in social media and the returns you get. Of course, if you spend more money putting your face out there, the chances are you’ll get noticed more. But it’s just that — a chance.

So what you need to do is find a way of spending less while still getting the same returns.

It’s difficult to measure social media ROI. But one thing’s for certain:

Increasing your chance of getting noticed isn’t the same as increasing your social media marketing spend. There is little to no correlation between the two.

Social media acts differently to traditional advertising mechanisms in that you, yourself, aren’t doing most of the marketing. What’s more important to you? That you have a regularly updated twitter feed or facebook page, or that you have a thousand followers? You can pay someone to regularly update your twitter feed. But you can’t pay a thousand people to follow you. Well… you could… but you’d be missing the point!

Unlike traditional advertising, where the more you spend, the more “airtime” you get, the bigger your advert or the longer it runs, etc, the point of social media is that people do your marketing for you.

So how do you get noticed?

The only worthwhile investment targeted at social media is good creative.

If you want people to blog about, tweet about, or simply share your message, you’ve got to give them an incentive. Only a good creative can come up with an inspired idea for a video that goes viral. Only a good copywriter can come up with a message that people want to pass on. Only a good designer can come up with an image that sticks in people’s minds.

If you spend thousands promoting yourself via social media, think again. Sure, you need to spend some money promoting yourself, getting your face, your name — your brand — out there. But the less you spend actually marketing yourself, the better. Good creative will provide you with a message that your customers will pass on to each other. It’s the only worthwhile spend there is.

So by all means cut back on your social media budget. There is, after all, good evidence that social media isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But it’s not just a case of investing less. It’s a case of investing smart. Creative is the way to do that.

A strategy for success:

Produce less content. Spend less time actively marketing it.
Spend money creating content that actually gets people talking.

Good content will market itself.

Simplify your online presence. Invest in good creative.

I’ve blogged before about how the forthcoming election will represent a paradigm shift in the advertising industry. Elections influence the advertising world for years to come, in the same way that wars create demand for new weapons… election campaigns force us to regularly re-evaluate marketing strategy. It’s a compressed period of time, a testing ground where we can quickly figure out what works and what doesn’t. The forthcoming election will be almost entirely about digital media. Whoever comes up with the most rebloggable, retweetable, viral content will win the advertising war.

Political blogger Iain Dale seems to think so too. His comment about Labour’s new poster campaign being almost totally irrelevant says it all:

No political party worth its salt spends any money on poster campaigns any longer. They don’t need to because the marketing can be done virally, for free.

It’s those last four words that count.

Marketing can be done virally, for free.

When it comes to social media, the only worthwhile spend is on good creative.

Good. He’s a hero. An archetypal, flawed, don’t-make-’em-like-that-any-more hero. He also happens to work in advertising.

He’s also a fictional character. But what can us real-life ad men learn from Don?

1. Stay ahead of the game

I just watched the finale of Season 3 online. I live in the UK. I’d have to wait months to see this on TV. So I didn’t.The world has moved online. Move with it, or be left behind — just like Harry is ahead of his time setting up a TV department at Sterling Cooper, so too have the agencies who saw the potential of the web powered ahead. Online advertising spend now outstrips television advertising. Get with the times.

If a film comes out in America but the release is delayed for even just a few weeks here, I’ll watch it online. That’s the way the internet works. Once it’s out, it’s out. You can’t censor it, block it, or slow it down. This is why Rupert Murdoch’s plan to make all his online newspapers subscription only will fail. Someone will reblog them for free.

2. Everyone at an ad agency should be creative.

It’s not just the creatives who have to think fast. Whether it’s a secretary coming up with a good excuse for why her boss is out of the office (hint – “he’s at the printers” doesn’t work in a digital age) or a personal assistant coming up with a reason why he needs an office, thinking on your feet gets results.

Pete Campbell gets made partner because he’s as creative as Don. No, he doesn’t have great advertising ideas. But when it comes to manipulating people, he’s good — one of the best .Whether it’s blackmailing Don or cooking up intricate schemes to get the next-door-neighbour’s au pair in the sack, he’s great at handling people. He’s creative.

Creative itself has to be creative two times over. Half of what Don does is to sell an idea to his clients. He has to be able to explain to them why his ideas work. If you can’t explain it to your clients, go back to the drawing board. Your idea’s just not that good.

3. Be cool.

Sharp suits. Sleek cars. The best barber in town. Everyone in Mad Men oozes cool the same way real-life ad-men sweat. Cool always saves the day. Whether you’ve been caught having an affair, or someone’s foot has been run over by a John Deere tractor, be cool.

For the last few years to be a “creative” you’ve had to look like a cross between a mad artist and an eccentric hobo. Either that, or look like you’ve just got out of bed. Times are changing. Clean cut is cool again.

Success breeds success. Successful people are successful because they look the part. People trust them. They look like winners. Would you let a loser loose on your account?

4. It’s tough at the top. It’s even tougher at the bottom.

Don’s broken away to form his own ad agency. He’s struck out, boldly — perhaps taking a leaf out of Connie Hilton’s book, or maybe just finally getting round to reading that Ayn Rand that Bert Cooper lent him. But suddenly the team’s gone from working in a gorgeous serviced office to working out of a hotel room. Sure, they’ve got room service, but it’s going to get cramped.

The point is, branching out on your own brings rewards. And if you don’t want to be a cog in a wheel, sometimes you’ve got to take risks. There are some agencies I’d love to work for. There are other jobs I’ve turned down. I’m a freelancer because the hours and the pay suit me right now. But if the right company made the right offer… or if a beautiful viscount’s daughter came along…

The most successful characters in Mad Men take risks. But they also take opportunities when they come knocking. And they’ve always got one eye on the next rung on the ladder. They play the long game.

5. There are some things you can’t get away with any more.

Drinking in the office. Now frowned upon. Try going for a gin martini after work instead. Drinks in the morning? Don’t get caught out in an embarassing pants-wetting episode. Try rehab. Sexual harrassment — it’s out too, I’m afraid. Homophobia — see how far that gets you these days. Television? Who cares. And for the love of God, don’t tell your boss you’ve had “a great idea to target the negro market”.

Mad Men is brilliant because it simultaneously shows us how far we’ve come, and how similar we still are. It’s a triumph of style and substance. A show whose popularity has spread by word of mouth.  In fact, Mad Men is just like the best marketing campaigns.

It’s won our hearts. We can all learn from it.

It’s inevitable. Most people see social media as a way of connecting with their friends. Nobody sees it as a glorified mechanism for product placement except for advertisers and their clients. People are going to start blocking out marketing-related social media the same way they kill adverts with AdBlock Plus (which I use, by the way — it’s there, who wouldn’t?).

We’re killing the golden goose.

Brand Republic reported today that only 33% of customers trust social networking sites to provide the information they require to make an informed decision about a purchase.

I’ll qualify that with the following comments:

• It’s perfectly possible the study was commissioned with the aim of putting social media in a bad light. But cui bono – who benefits? Most agencies are stampeding over one another to reach the top of the social media pile. This study should give us all pause for thought.
  
• The statistic is 33% to “make an informed decision” about a purchase. It’s perfectly possible that 99% of social network users see social media as part of the process of making an informed decision. They’ll then google prices, reviews, etc –  while social media may not be the deciding factor, it still has an influence. You wouldn’t buy something just because someone’s twittered about it. But you might read a review about it, or go and check one out in the shops.
  
• When compared to the 68% who trust “other online sources”  such as price comparison websites, it’s clear that social media isn’t the ‘magic bullet’ some commentators were making out it was. In fact, it’s perfectly possible that social media just isn’t that important.

But why isn’t social media as important as a price comparison website? The answer lies with the question of trust. 33% trust social media. 68% trust other sources.

I think the flood of digital marketing agencies towards ‘harnessing’ social media is responsible for this lack of trust.

How do we we rebuild trust in social media?
The answer’s simple. We stop milking it for all it’s worth.

Consumers are getting smarter. They were never dumb. But the more information they have at their fingertips, the harder it is to pull the wool over their eyes. So don’t try.

Inform first. Persuade second.
Then, when that’s done, try to sell.

Nobody likes spam. They do like product comparison websites. Nobody likes being told what to think — or what to buy — they do like making informed choices. And if you talk to them like human beings, they’ll listen.

That’s the way to use social media.

Engage with your customers. Strengthen your brand by building up trust — talk to them. Social media is a conversation. It’s not a platform for you to shout your wares like a Sunday market trader.

So I got talking. I didn’t go to pitch my services, rather I went to brush up on the latest developments on the web. What are London’s finest web entrepreneurs talking about?

Well, unsurprisingly, the present obsession is social media. What did surprise me somewhat was how cynical many of the people I met were about it.

Web entrepreneurs think social media has limitations

One person — whose business is basically centred around Twitter — told me, in devastating words, “social media is just a buzzword… it’s the new SEO… all the people who were marketing themselves as SEO experts or gurus or whatever a couple of years ago, well, now they’re the social media experts. Of course they know nothing about either.”

Of course he’s right. SEO was an arcane art and promised more than it could deliver — usually because it attracted one real expert to every ten cowboys. It seems the majority of web entrepreneurs feel social media is going the same way.

People are five times more likely to trust social media than other ads — but for how long?

I’ve been doing a lot of work in social media lately. I think I know a lot about it — I’ve been blogging almost nine years, I was on Facebook when there were only a few ‘university networks’ and you had to have a uni address to join (remember that?) and I can cogently argue using examples, metrics and conversion rate statistics to explain to you exactly why I don’t bother using twitter.

The most interesting statistic I’ve dug up on social media is this: people are five times more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend than they are an advert on the web (stat derived from Socialnomics). That’s not surprising in itself. In fact, it seems like stating the obvious.

What I do wonder is how long that will carry on for. I see an enormous amount of social media “experts” all jumping aboard the bandwagon trying to use social media as a cheap, ROI rich way of advertising. There’s little evidence that social media boosts conversion rates although as I’ve said elsewhere, “you can’t put a price on a conversation, or value the ability to get inside your customers’ heads.”

But I’ve come to look upon social media as something of a goldmine. Incredibly valuable at first. But sooner or later, it’ll run out.

My fear is that the more and more we use social media to push products,
The more social media will become devalued as a platform.

People trust it at the minute because they’re not cynical towards it,
The way they’re cynical about ads on radio or TV.

What will happen if social media marketing campaigns are mismanaged? I know some very good ones — in fact, I’m working on one right now. But I do begin to fear the backlash as more and more companies rush to cash in on virgin markets.

People trust social media. The question is, will the increased use of social media to market goods and services result in a loss of trust — or will social media find a way around it?

Will it, essentially, learn how to reject the most overt advertising campaigns, and pour scorn on the people who use it wrongly, as it did when Habitat attempted to use Twitter?