I was lucky to work for a client of some of the top advertising agencies back in the 1980’s – I learned from some of the best people in the advertising business how capital letters work. The secret is that most of the time they actually STOP people reading!

If every word of your headline starts with a capital, the eye stops at each word – this means that they read one word at a time instead of the sense of the whole sentence.

In some marketing material this can work – if you know how to construct a sentence using key words that connect individually with the reader – like ‘Free’ ‘New’ ‘Save’ ‘Exciting’. However, when you’re writing a headline for your web copy so that you engage the reader, this is not the best way to go about it – you want the whole message to hit them, right between the eyes!

If you really want to learn how the marketing gurus make capitals work you’ll need to read the material generated by people like Ted Nicholas, Frank Kern, Armand Morin and others.

When it comes to your web copy your headline just needs to be easy to read, fast to digest and tell people you’ve got what they’re looking for.

Different rules apply when you put your message on paper instead of the screen. You need to consider how people handle the document.

In yesterday’s meeting we discussed the impact of letters, formal invitation cards and email. They all work in different ways.

If you want someone to pay attention to your message a letter works better than email in most cases. Especially if the envelope is hand written (neatly, of course) and it has a stamp rather than a frank.

Because most people receive fewer letters that are personally addressed and zillions of emails that are scanned rather than read, a personal letter makes more of an impact.

Invitation cards also create an impact – but don’t put anything on the other side, people often never turn them over and anything on the back doesn’t get seen by up to 50% of the recipients. This also applies to A4 flyers, unless you have a big bold ‘please turn over’ instruction in the bottom right hand corner – on both sides.

To get email messages opened they need a really good headline. It’s a bit like web copy – you have to engage your reader quickly and in only a few words.

When you’re marketing think carefully about the impact you’re making and choose a method that makes things happen.

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Most people sit down and write what they want to say – and the result may have all the information in it, but doesn’t have structure. It’s a bit like Eric Morecombe said to Andre Previn “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.”

Much of the copywriting that’s done by people who haven’t been trained in the skill falls into that category – all the right information, but not necessarily in the right order!

If you have something to write it needs structure – so here’s the steps to success. First answer these questions:

1. Identify what the purpose of the piece is? What do you want people to do when they’ve read it?
2. What do they need to know in order to make the decision to take the action you want?
3. What are the emotional triggers that will make them feel they want to take action?

Then plan your piece:
What will attract their attention? Use it to create your headline and opening paragraph.
What are the key pieces of information? Arrange them in a logical order that leads people on?
Remember – one thought per sentence, one idea per paragraph – and keep your paragraphs short (you can cheat a bit and divide longer paragraphs into two related thoughts, rather than write a long paragraph that loses your reader).
What is your call to action and how will you make this a no-brainer?

Spend most of your time on the headline and opening paragraph, if you don’t get people started they’ll never see the rest of the message!

With a skeleton plan to work around, the writing gets easier.
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Have ever watched someone waiting for a web page to download? Do they sit calmly or are their fingers tapping impatiently and a certain amount of muttering and sighing going on if it doesn’t snap onto the screen instantly?

It’s amazing when you think that we all waiting much longer when we were on dial-up – how did we ever achieve anything at all? However, that’s not my point – my point is that we are all impatient; the web has taught us to expect fast results. We want information and we want it now!

The days when you’d go to the local library or get the encyclopaedias out are long gone. You sit in front of the screen and you have access to more information that most of us can possibly want. So, when someone arrives on your website – that’s the frame of mind they’re in: Impatient!

Take a good look at your own website – how fast does it download (try this on someone else’s computer so you’re not accessing your own cache)? What is the first thing on the page that attracts your attention? Is that your key message? If not, why not?

What are people really looking for when they come to your website? Does the key message answer the question or indicate that the answer is available on this website?

Get a few people to do this for you too – what is their feedback? You know that, unless all the answers are resoundingly positive, you might need to rethink your website.
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I love words – however, as George Bernard Shaw famously said ‘You must learn to murder your children’! Writing lots of lovely words about your company doesn’t work for the reader on the web.

When someone has arrived at your website they are looking for something; they’re either searching for information, or they want to buy something. If you spend their valuable time blinding them with how wonderful you are, you will lose them fast.

People want action – so tell them what your product or service will do for them and then tell them what to do next. Web copy that doesn’t draw the picture of how my problems will vanish and how lots of fantastic benefits will be mine isn’t doing it’s job.

A web page that doesn’t have a clear call to action is a mortal sin!

Create a clear cut vision of what life will be like with your product or service in place, then give them either another page to get more detail or a phone number and email (or both).

Cut any words that don’t contribute to these two outcomes!

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Testimonials are a great way to show your expertise off! A third party saying how good you are is so much better than saying it yourself. So it’s really good when someone gives you a testimonial that you can add to your marketing material and your web copy.

Do you collect them? And how?

Do you have really good testimonials? And do you know what makes a testimonial really powerful?

Part of your normal operation should be to ask your clients for feedback on what you do for them regularly and at times when you know they’re happy with what you’ve done. However, most people have no idea how to write a good testimonial and you end up with lots of notes like this:

‘Acme Widgets were really helpful and it was a real pleasure doing business with them.’

That’s not a testimonial – I call that ‘therapy’!

A testimonial answers these three questions:

1. What did we do for you? (to tell potential clients what sort of work you undertook)
2. What was it like working with us? (this is what most people want to say – it’s the warm and fuzzy bit)
3. What changed as a result of what we did for you? (this is the powerful bit – measurable results!)

Ask your clients to answer these three questions and give their permission for you to use it and you’ll have some very powerful marketing messages to add to your web copy.

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You are probably the worst person to write about your business! That applies to me too – even though I’m a professional copywriter. The problem is that we know too much – and we’re so enthusiastic about our businesses that we want to tell everyone everything!

People ask how I can write about businesses that are technical, complex and all about minute detail without hours, weeks or months of research. However, if you put yourself in the shoes of a typical customer the picture changes dramatically.

It may sound brutal – but as a customer I really don’t want to know everything there is to know about your business. I want to know what I get – aren’t you the same? Have you ever glazed over as an overenthusiastic business owner or sales person waxes lyrical about their goods or services?

With general material – like web copy – you have to find a way to engage a wide variety of potential readers, or have several different websites for several different markets. However, when it comes to targeted campaigns it gets easier – if you want to address doctors, lawyers, accountants, plumbers, DIY enthusiasts, financial advisors – you have to know what each niche market will respond to – and then hit those hot buttons!

My job is to get that information from you and then present the message that does exactly that. I love it!

P.S. Someone else goes to work on my material – I have the same problem everyone else does – too much information!!!!
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I mentioned the words ‘current economic climate’ on Twitter recently and got a flurry of positive responses along the lines of ‘I refuse to participate in a recession’; ‘What recession?’; ‘I’m busier than ever,’ and so on.

I think that’s great – and you’ve also probably heard the one about ‘The people who market during a recession are several steps ahead of everyone else when the economy improves’. All this has seeds of truth – and certainly I’m not less busy at present, my clients are still asking for web copy, promotional material, articles and blogs. However, I was reading Gihan Perera’s newsletter the other day and he made an excellent point.

Even if you are doing well, some of your clients will be feeling the pinch – and some, frankly, struggling. Their focus has changed – they are less likely to be looking at the long term issues, they’re much more interested in the quick results department.

As a writer this means that they are looking for flyers to get sales rather than brochures for the longer term promotion. They want web copy that delivers customers, not lots of nice informational stuff (and quite right too). They want articles, blogs and newsletters that tell people they’re the best, they’re experts and they’re well-known – to generate leads.

How has the focus for your client’s business changed? And what have you done about it?
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In conversation yesterday with some friends the issue of ‘why have you got a website?’ came up. A number of answers were suggested:

This then spawned another question; what do you want people to do when they get to your website?

Four answers came up:

So there’s your challenge for today:
What is the purpose of your website?
What do you want people to do when they’ve read your web copy?

Tomorrow there’ll be another challenge!

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I’ve talked about headlines and how important they are – then the subject of subheaders came up. So what is a subheader?

It can be: