Whether you call them sales hooks or elevator pitches, they’re a pretty useful way to explain who you are and what you do.
Here’s a quick formula that might help you improve yours…
(With a rough draft of mine to show how easy-ish it is).
1. Identity: Hi, I’m Liam.
2. Struggle: I’ve been helping businesses with their marketing for the last ten years. But, no matter how good it got, there was always one thing that would dramatically move the needle.
3. Discovery: The copy. Picking the right words, that spoke to the right audience, in their language, while addressing their deep-rooted pain points.
4. Results: This improved copy meant better response rates, higher conversion rates and ultimately, more sales.
Put it all together and voila!
Would love to hear yours, or if you need help – gimme a shout
It doesn’t matter if you’re a copywriter like me, or a speaker, or an accountant, or a carpet cleaner – we’re all in the same boat.
We are all in the business of marketing ourselves.
Which means that, as we head into 2020, we need to shift our focus a bit more.
You can’t easily, on a long-term basis, just outsource your marketing, say you’re ticking the ‘marketing box’ and carry on as you’ve always done.
Things are becoming more and more competitive, and there are a million reasons for someone NOT to buy from you.
And marketing agencies, social media gurus, and heck – even copywriters, who claim to be in the marketing biz, often fail to deliver anything that will help to reduce this competition gap.
Content is great.
Social updates are nice.
But, if they don’t deliver you results, sales, leads – SOMETHING, they don’t mean shit.
And why is it? It’s because they/we often don’t have real skin in the game.
At the end of the day, most of us get paid before the results get delivered.
I’ve got one close client who, while he focuses on what he does, he still keeps a firm hand on his marketing rudder. Despite occasional lulls in productivity, due to our long relationship, we both desperately want the other to succeed – this is skin in the game, a reason, an incentive for continued improvement.
Which sums up why every business owner, large and small, must put more effort into the marketing game for themselves.
You’re not in the business of being a carpet cleaner, you’re in the business of marketing yourself as a carpet cleaner – because, without good marketing, you won’t have customers, and without the customers and their grubby carpets – you aren’t a carpet cleaner.
So, in 2020, let’s devote more time to marketing ourselves, to create an ongoing stream of clients, so that, feast or famine, we’ll always be swamped with work.
I’ve written about my little by Archie here before. He’s massively into dinosaurs.
He’ll watch at least one Jurassic Park film a day, has dino bed covers and wallpaper in his bedroom and plays with hundreds of dinosaur toys in every shape and size.
As you can guess, his favourite thing to talk about is – dinosaurs.
He turned four in June, and he can name even the ugliest, most obscure beast (subtle humble boast!).
You can keep your basic t-rex and triceratops; bring on the enormous flying quetzalcoatlus or noisy parasaurolophus.
Dinosaurs I didn’t even know existed until he began exploring them.
And, because he’s so passionate, I need to keep learning about new dino facts to keep up with him. To give us something to talk about, to argue about which is better, and to keep him engaged and learning.
To speak his language, I need to look stuff up and stay one step ahead.
Just like we should be doing with our customers.
Keeping our finger on our industry buttons to ensure we’re using the right words, terminology and tone to maintain a meaningful connection with our customers, proving we’re on the money, on their level and ‘get’ their problems and worries.
So, go back to your website or most recent marketing push, check the language you’re using, yours or your customers – is it still relevant to today’s problems and current events?
Need a hand with your marketing copy?
I write things to help you sell more stuff – whether it’s websites, landing pages, email copy, leaflets or direct mail.
If you need a hand, drop me a message, let me know your favourite dinosaur and what you need help with.
I never noticed how dirty the plastic bits around our front windows were – until this leaflet popped through our door.
We hadn’t considered it for even a nanosecond.
Which means, although we could all pick holes in the design, copy and execution – this little leaflet did work.
It brought an embarrassing problem, a problem we didn’t even know we had, to our front of mind. And now, we’re about to book our front windows in for a clean.
We’re not all as sophisticated as we make out. Don’t forget that honest, local marketing with stuff like direct mail can still be as, if not more effective than internet marketing.
He became famous for a one-sentence advert he wrote for an ancient department store Wanamakers, which cleared the entire store’s supply of ‘rotten gossamers’ (Google doesn’t make that one any clearer!) in one morning:
“We have a lot of rotten gossamers and things we want to get rid of.”
– this ad just worked.
He was later hired by another clothing store to save them from the brink of bankruptcy, his ad for them read:
“We are bankrupt. This announcement will bring our creditors down on our necks. But if you come and buy tomorrow, we shall have the money to meet them. If not, we will go to the wall.”
– The next day, impressed by the frankness of the ad, people who hadn’t bought there for years rushed in to save the store.
As John said, when you’re in trouble:
“There’s only one way out. Tell the truth.”
So, how can you apply this to your marketing copy?
Try telling your audience why they shouldn’t buy from you, because of X or Y.
Do your own ‘pros and cons’ list. Making comparisons dead simple for your readers.
Be honest about your background. Instead of skirting around the facts, if you don’t have a degree in English (like me) just say.
There are a million more ways to do this, but you get my gist.
So, here’s my brutally honest copywriting intro…
I don’t have a degree, I didn’t even complete my A-levels, my writing tool continuously tells me I’m using comma’s incorrectly, and I’m always balancing my time between looking after my son and your work – which means your copy will often be written at night or first thing in the morning.
But, since I don’t have qualifications to fall back on, everything I’ve done so far has been self-taught, on the job training. Which means it’s all, real-world experience working in and for businesses vs ‘book smarts’ who learn but don’t execute.
Likewise, my time constraints mean I am very productive in the short time I have, and again – my childcare commitments mean I have proper skin in the game. If I don’t deliver copy that works for you, you don’t buy from me again.
And there we have it. So, how can you inject a bit more honesty into your marketing copy?
Ever find yourself so inundated in work, business development and family life that you completely forget you even have a blog?
…🙄 or is that just me?
Practice what I preach and all that.
But, I have been pretty busy with client work lately.
Over the last few months, alongside all the personal projects I’m working on – Grammarly tells me I’ve written almost 47,000 words in the past couple of months.
So, what does that mean in real terms?
SEO Copywriting: One client, through content alone, with zero link building, soared up the Google ranks for 5 of his money keywords – from around page 2-3, to page 1 for them all.
Cold Email Copywriting: It’s meant a brand new startup sending out nearly 500 cold emails to prospects, and closing their very first client just 24 hours later.
Email Sequence Copywriting: Helping an online coach revamp his email sequences. Writing copy for a member follow-up sequence, which resulted in a 2.5% increased conversion rate vs the previous series.
Which again, shows just how powerful the right message, delivered to the right audience, at the right time, can make a real difference for businesses.
It’s why they hire sales copywriters – to pull in needle-moving results.
…even if they don’t regularly update their blog!
If you want help with some of your own copy, hit me up. I’d be glad to chat: [email protected]
“No thanks is the answer. Nobody really uses email anymore. Marketing with it won’t work in 2019.”
The above note dropped into my inbox this morning.
It’s an EMAIL response to an outreach EMAIL I sent to some stone cold prospects last week.
Oh, sweet baby Jesus, the levels of irony…
It’s something I do hear quite a bit.
The favourite quip from know-alls being…
“You do know, EMAIL IS DEAD!?”
I get why they say this. Apparently, we spend about TWO HOURS per day using social media.
With Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and everything in-between to entertain us, who wants to check their boring old email aye?
It’s true, we spend less time in our inbox than we do on social media.
But, it doesn’t mean email is any less critical.
After all, try signing up to most of the social networks, or using online banking, or paying utilities, or shopping online WITHOUT using your email address.
You can’t. We all use email in some form or another daily.
As we’ve just shown, every business, large or small, whether you like it or not, is an EMAIL business.
So, given how much we all still use email, you’re missing out on a massive chunk of potential customers if you don’t use email marketing as a central cog of your marketing efforts.
Someone’s email inbox is one of the few sacred, intimate areas where you can still get your messages delivered.
They hate spam, but they will open, read and respond to messages if it’s relevant to them, their pain, or their need.
Think about it; you don’t even see every social media post or advert as you’re endlessly scrolling on Facebook.
But, you at least *notice* an email that’s popped into your inbox, even if it’s just to delete it.
It’s your job to make that subject line and email snippet enticing enough to save it from the Trash bin.
Need a hand with your email copywriting?
You need a Freelance Email Copywriter
And you’re looking straight at one…almost.
Whether they’re stone cold emails, part of a longer-term email marketing campaign or you need help to start a newsletter; I could be your man.
For a freelance email copywriter who focusses on driving sales and not just creating more content, give me a bell.
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.