It is a well known fact (apparently) that men think about sex every six seconds. So next time the guy next to you on the train, plane, tube or bus has a misty look in his eyes you can be pretty sure what he is thinking about.

From a copywriter’s point of view this is a bit of a pain because if you write a sales letter that takes 5 minutes to read, your carefully crafted sales pitch is interrupted 50 times. To be honest, whether the statistic is true or not is neither here nor there – the point is that when someone picks up your sales letter your reader is more than likely focusing on something else other than your sales message.

A good sales writer will know their product intimately and will be able to write about it convincingly. Fantastic, but how does that help with the wondering mind problem? It doesn’t, but it does highlight that to be a great sales writer you have to know your reader intimately too. No, I am not saying that you should dash out and romance every member of your target audience. You’d be far too knackered to write anything but you should be able to understand their idiosyncrasies, their motivations, their innermost fears and desires.

Before you even start writing you should build a psychological profile of your reader, for example:

• What sex are they?
• How old are they?
• What do they want more of in their lives?
• How do others see them?
• Are they head or heart people?

By doing this you will find it easier to write copy that speaks directly to them in a way they’ll find difficult to ignore. Admittedly in some cases their own inner thoughts will still be more appealing but hopefully it will grab the attention of most and get your message across.

In a nut shell, if you do the leg work you’ll reap the rewards with a masterly piece of sales writing that will grab hold of your prospects by the collar and shake them – figuratively speaking of course.

Sally Ormond

Freelance Copywriter

Let me take your business to new heights by making every word count.

This article will hopefully clear up some misconceptions about copywriting. Basically it is sales writing – that’s it in a nut shell. It is primarily about selling, the actual writing is almost secondary. Below are some key ideas that you should always keep in mind when writing.

It’s not about you 

Sorry, but as a writer you come at the back of the queue. You must focus on the reader; it is them that will be doing the buying. What are they like? Are they male or female? What is their age group? What are their likes and dislikes? These are the questions you need to think about. Take an interest in them, find out what makes them tick.

All good things come in small packages 

That’s what my mum always told me and she wasn’t wrong. Many people seem to be under the misconception that sales writing, in any form, has to be impressively high-brow, be full of ridiculously long and complicated words and sentences. Well it doesn’t and in fact, shouldn’t.  Keep it simple. It doesn’t matter who you are writing for or how educated they may be; your audience will be turned off if they are faced with unfathomable words and rambling sentences. The best writing is clear, simple and concise - and don’t use jargon!

B2B or B2C? 

Whether your audience is Joe Public or another company your style should be the same. Many people think that selling to another business requires a different approach. But at the end of the day it is still a person who will be reading your sales letter or brochure.

Forget the F-word

No I haven’t gone barking mad. By the F-word I am referring to features. Your audience aren’t going to be impressed if you write about a list of features. By doing that the only reaction you will get is ‘so what?’ You must show your audience why the product is for them.

You have to sell them the benefits. If a guy wants to be a better football player, and you sell him your latest top of the range football boots on the basis that they’ll make that happen, he’ll buy them. OK, daft example, but you get the idea. It is all about tapping into the buyer’s emotional need.

Whatever you write you must grab the readers attention (a killer headline), get their interest in what you are selling (that’s where the benefits come in), create a desire (if they want something they’ll convince themselves they need it) and finally get them to act (buy, sign up etc).

Sally Ormond

Freelance Copywriter 

Let me take your business to new heights by making every word count.

Microsoft have relaunched windowslive as a social networking platform. For some time they seemed to be desperately trying to buy Yahoo!, then [allegedly] tried AOL, they’ve got nowhere with Facebook, Bebo and the likes and seem to have given up hitting an existing, popular market. Even their most popular platform;  Hotmail has been falling behind as other webmail systems moved into the realms of AJAX programming (the ability to load web content without reloading the entire page), their Spam filter also leaves much to be desired, certainly compared to Gmail who’s spam filter is virtually flawless!

Microsoft have tried giving away free templated websites with Office Live (which they are still doing) but the uptake seems slow and promotion scarce (for which I’m certainly thankful for), the software itself is flexible but a little over-complicated. The bonus is that they provide the hosting and domain name for free which you can take with you if and when you upgrade. For small websites with few followers, this is an excellent solution.

So what are Microsoft doing now? They seem to have gone back to their corner muttering insanities under their breaths and started work on their own products again. I fear this is too little too late as they attempt to copy the best bits from other sites rather than being inspired and moving the web forward.

Microsoft should ideally stick to offline software and continue developing it’s own products rather than trying to hit the online market. As their web efforts increase, their software side seems to be diminishing, allowing open source equivilents and indeed Apple to take the limelight. Windows is, and always has been a great product, most complainers are complaining using this platform so they must be doing something right even though it’s not quite perfect for everyone. The online side of Microsoft, that is their email exchange software and various others should be opened up to avoid the need for specific Microsoft exchange servers. This way they can compete with Google documents (which is not 100% Word compatible, and certainly far from perfect) then they will continue to dominate the office and avoid loss of marketshare to these free services. Unfortunately as more and more people are storing documents online and slowly coming to terms with editing them online, Microsoft are losing out to online office solutions.

The moral of this story is really to stick to what you’re good at. In a previous employment, I worked initially on design, development, hosting, web, print, seo, stationary, and promotional products. Between two people it became impossible to do anything with 100% quality. We attempted to project manage printers etc. but this too impacted on what we were best at. Only when we removed these ’sidelines’ were we able to concentrate entirely on web design and development and spend time making things run efficiently with the quality we, and the clients were happy with. External products we could work with but were not seen as supplied by us, so once we sent clients out to a printer, we didn’t have to worry about how things were moving. This is a lesson I’ve brought into Zako Media and until we have the skillset and staff to offer a particular product or service, we won’t offer it. I only want Zako Media to give out work which we and the client are happy with, we will not dilute our efforts, attention, knowledge, time, or profits on external activities just to try and help make a sale.

Sorry, another stolen blog, this time from Greg Howlett and can be found at MarketingPilgrim With Google and other Search Engines becoming more intelligent and concentrating on human content for human searches, is SEO really worth it’s money in the long run or will there always be a need?

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According to Shoemoney, SEO has no future. I do not always agree with him, but in this case, he is dead right. Let me pull on my flame retardant suit before I explain why.First, understand that the only reason SEO has ever worked is because search engines were not advanced enough to always show relevant information. I remember when I started selling online. At the time, I had only a few competitors in my industry and it was easy to beat them in the SEO game. It took only a few metatags and such, and within weeks, I was dominant.That went on for years. Back in those days, a monkey could have dominated search engines rankings. We moved from metatags to inbound links with the right anchor text and continued our domination. How easy was it? I basically knew during that period how many inbound links we needed to achieve top three rankings, and the results were uncannily consistent.

Eventually, the search engines got smarter, and ended the concept of guaranteed SEO dominance. Some people are still in denial. I still have SEO snake oil salesmen calling me trying to sell me link trading services.

Here is why SEO as we know it is going to continue its death spiral. Search engines are too smart and they have a different agenda. They do not want to reward crummy companies that play SEO games–they want to give the top listings to the best companies. And they are quickly gaining access to the information they need to do exactly that. They will use traffic and buying stats to figure out who the top companies are.

Take my industry of health supplements. Do you think Google wants to reward the SEO contortions of unknown companies and affiliates with lots of free business? Of course not–they want to send their visitors to the top supplement sites in the industry.

Within a year or two, they will be good at it. I can predict what supplement companies will be showing on the first page of Google soon. They will be the companies that have strong brands and lots of business. If you are not in the top ten of your industry, you had better find a way to get there in a hurry if you want to be on the first page of Google.

Yes, this means that the rich will get richer and the poor will starve for SEO traffic. If you are not in the first category, you had better find a way to get there quick. The middle class is about to disappear.

In my last article, I wrote about the importance of branding on the conversion rate. If you want a long term SEO strategy, guess where your focus should be? Yes, your branding. Forget the typical SEO tricks; focus instead on building your brand to a position where Google WANTS you on the front page of results.

If you absolutely have to hire an SEO expert, hire one that understands this truth. I think, however, that you would be better served by largely forgetting about SEO and focusing instead on building your brand.

Brilliant article written by Guy Levine. Original text here. He explains the difference between SEO and Adwords, that both are good, but when to effectively apply them.

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Welcome to the great debate: “Do I pay every time someone clicks on one of my little adverts on Google, ranging from 5p to £25 per click, or do I hire an expert to dominate the natural listings (the free ones on the left hand side)?” Guy Levine. chief executive of Web Marketing Advisor, gives us the lowdown.

Pay per click, Google adwords, search engine marketing and sponsored listings are all names for pay per click. You choose a word or phrase you want, you bid a price, then an advert is displayed when someone types the word or phrase into Google. When someone clicks, you pay.

Search engine optimisation – or SEO to the cool young internet types – is the process of inducing “Google love”. Basically, tweaking the pages of a website to make the search engines love them. I know there are other search engines, but at the moment Big G rules!

On the other hand, pay per click allows hungry entrepreneurs to have their websites ranking on the front page of search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) within as little as three hours. Yes, you have to pay but you get visibility. Another great benefit is that you can run multiple adverts, all 128 characters of them, to test the best hooks. Google will even tell you which one people love the most.

Search engine optimisation is the long game. You tweak your site, you wait for the search engines to update their listings, you tweak again, you wait. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong. But boy, when you get it right! The first result on page one is better than the icing on the cake, it’s internet nirvana.

Let me share one word of warning. It’s fine being number one, but you need to make sure you are number one for a word which people search when they want to buy, not just browse.

SEO, I love it, but my best advice is to always run a PPC campaign first. Choose your keywords, test them and make sure your site converts. When it does, crank up the SEO.

Get them both right and there’s gold there in them there hills!

Guy Levine is the chief executive of search engine optimisation firm Web Marketing Advisor.