Marketing does work, you are doing it wrong.

[The Byre]

Define core advantage -----> Plan marketing strategy on this ------> Implement tools aligned to this

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

Step one - research the market.

Step two - research your relationship with the market.

David Ogilvy: "If you ignore market research, you are as dangerous as a general who ignores decodes of enemy signals!"

 

[Silky]

This is a particularly important point. In the vast majority of cases the design doesn't do the selling, the copy does. There are exemptions, for example with highly aesthetic products like jewellery, but even those need some copy to explain what the product is and what it's made of to increase the perceived value and improve the response rate..

Copy is important but I do have to disagree with this I'm afraid. Our customers aren't buying our products because we've some nicely written copy on our site, but because of the product offering, the price points, the unique gap we're filling. Even with the best copy in the world, an overpriced, me-too product with absolutely no USP will be difficult to shift off the page.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Copy is important but I do have to disagree with this I'm afraid. Our customers aren't buying our products because we've some nicely written copy on our site, but because of the product offering, the price points, the unique gap we're filling. Even with the best copy in the world, an overpriced, me-too product with absolutely no USP will be difficult to shift off the page.

And how are you getting across the information about your product offering, the price points and the unique gap? Telepathy?

Of course the product is the most important thing, but it's the copy (and occasionally other features such as images) which communicates this information to the visitor. Any information like that which is showcased through the medium of text is copy.

Good copy isn't always some fancy story full of techniques and tricks. It's just about showing prospects how good the product is.

 

[Silky]

And how are you getting across the information about your product offering, the price points and the unique gap? Telepathy?.

Word of mouth works extremely well I find - particularly with a very loyal customer base....

I misunderstood your original post in that I thought you were putting copy above product (surely not?), I agree it's important but certainly not the highest rank. For us photos speak a thousand words - a page full of the best copy in the world doesn't have anywhere near the 'sizzle' that photos of the fabulous holiday locations have, the detail of the hotel, the evocative imagery....

 

[Silky]

Actually I'd also add to that 'reviews'. A huge number of our customers have read the reviews in depth and are hugely influenced by these. I guess this is a form of copy, but in a much more influential form.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Word of mouth works extremely well I find - particularly with a very loyal customer base....

I misunderstood your original post in that I thought you were putting copy above product (surely not?), I agree it's important but certainly not the highest rank. For us photos speak a thousand words - a page full of the best copy in the world doesn't have anywhere near the 'sizzle' that photos of the fabulous holiday locations have, the detail of the hotel, the evocative imagery....

Even if someone personally doesn't use a lot of copy and descriptive information on their website, a prospect still needs to have learned about a product and its benefits at some point if they have an inclination to buy it, so the business's sales may even benefit from copy which is displayed on other websites and advertising. Sometimes people pick up information about products in subtle ways from many different sources.

But yes, copy merely serves to communicate why a product is so good in the most persuasive manner. Copy is essentially as strong as the product or service being sold. You're also right in that copy isn't always the primary factor and that mediums like photography are sometimes far more effective in certain sectors.

However, I suspect that good copywriting would increase sales in the vast majority of sectors, even if it merely plays a supplemental role alongside other mediums (such as photography) which are more effective in certain circumstances.

In the case of selling holiday locations, I once wrote a sales letter selling package holidays which, through text supplemented with images, told the story of what the prospect could do and really helped them to imagine sitting there in the scene. If you think of non-fiction books and just how effective they can be at conjuring up thoughts, feelings and imagination visuals, then it just goes to show how effective it can be.

 

[Silky]

Not advertising a copywriting service by any chance ?

Copy is definitely not as strong as the product being sold, in fact I can't remember when I have ever bought something because of a good write up... in fact if I think of a lot of my most recent purchasing decisions I've made these without even reading a lot of the copy - ie search for 'dress', 'blue' and looked at pretty pictures, material, size and price. There may have been paragraphs of how beautiful the dress was and how it would make me feel like Cinderella at the ball yadda yadda, but in essence once I found the dress, I googled the brand name to see where I could get it for the best price. Same applies for a wide number of recent purchases.

I'm not knocking good copy, I just don't believe it's anywhere near top of the rank in purchasing decisions. It does make a good impression for visitors to a website (God how I hate poor grammar and spelling errors), and it can set a scene, but will it influence where I'll buy my next online gadget / clothing / holiday.....I very much doubt it.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Not advertising a copywriting service by any chance ?

To be honest it's more to do with my passion for it. Even if someone writes their own copy, I'd rather see it become successful and help their business. That's why I'm always happy to offer free advice.

Copy is definitely not as strong as the product being sold, in fact I can't remember when I have ever bought something because of a good write up... in fact if I think of a lot of my most recent purchasing decisions I've made these without even reading a lot of the copy - ie search for 'dress', 'blue' and looked at pretty pictures, material, size and price. There may have been paragraphs of how beautiful the dress was and how it would make me feel like Cinderella at the ball yadda yadda, but in essence once I found the dress, I googled the brand name to see where I could get it for the best price. Same applies for a wide number of recent purchases.

But you're choosing an example of one industry sector where copywriting isn't as effective. As I've already said, aesthetic-focused products (clothing, jewellery etc) rely primarily on photographs, although some good copy can improve response rates above a photograph alone (I've seen it happen in A/B split testing).

I'm not knocking good copy, I just don't believe it's anywhere near top of the rank in purchasing decisions. It does make a good impression for visitors to a website (God how I hate poor grammar and spelling errors), and it can set a scene, but will it influence where I'll buy my next online gadget / clothing / holiday.....I very much doubt it.

You're looking at it wrong. Copy isn't a purchasing decision. It COMMUNICATES the purchasing decisions to you. It all boils down to how well the copy showcases the product and how well it makes prospects realise how good the product is.

Anyone who wants to buy a feature-rich product or service will obviously want to learn about it before parting with their hard-earned cash. Copy dictates what the prospect learns and what their impression of the product or service is. If it's good at that then you get more sales. If it's bad at that, then you get less.

Copywriting obviously doesn't work on a universal level, nor is it magic (it isn't going to make 100 people buy a product if they didn't want to buy it previously), but if it persuades 20% more people to buy something, and increases a business's sales by 20%, then it's obviously a worthwhile investment. I'd recommend that you look up A/B split testing experiments online just to show how much a change in words and a change in the information communicated can influence sales.

 

[Silky]

You're looking at it wrong. Copy isn't a purchasing decision. It COMMUNICATES the purchasing decisions to you.

If I know what I'm looking for (dress / kids' ridiculously expensive trainers/ office stationery and a number of other recent purchases I've made) the communication needed is price and perhaps some sign that the website is reputable if I don't already know it.

If I'm looking for something that's not a simple consumer good, let's say some kind of business service, then I agree good copy would play a part, but the first thing that would hit me would be the overall impact & professionalism of the website. If it looks Heath Robinson, then the best copy in the world wouldn't save it, I'd be off - if it looks good, then I'd certainly expect it to be well written too.

So ....coming back to the original discussion, yes, I do believe in good copy, I just don't believe it's the most important factor in online marketing.

 

[iiisark]

Thanks for the useful post AllUpHere,
Let me add one simple marketing tehnique i used when started my first business. In 2006 me and my best friend decided to start a removal company. We had £2000 only so bought a luton van for around £1500 and the rest spent for local newspaper advertising. We placed an ad on 12 -13 different local newspapers and start waiting...On the next day the phone started to ring and i asked each customer: the simple question: "How did you find about us?" . On the end of the week i found that all calls are comming from only 1 newspaper - Enfield Advertiser. The question: "How did you find about us?" save me a lot of money so my advice is - always ask you customers this simple question.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

I misunderstood your original post in that I thought you were putting copy above product (surely not?),

There are numerous examples of second rate products being sold via good copy. Just look at the TV shopping channels...

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

If I know what I'm looking for (dress / kids' ridiculously expensive trainers/ office stationery and a number of other recent purchases I've made) the communication needed is price and perhaps some sign that the website is reputable if I don't already know it.

There are certainly situations like that, but copy is also useful for selling the business as well as the product. I've recently worked on one project where people were finding the product by searching for its specific make and model, so the prospects already knew they wanted it, but they just needed to decide where to buy it from. In this case, we included copy which mentioned the specific benefits of using that business (free UK delivery, guarantees, customer service and so forth).

By building rapport in this way, it's possible to secure a customer even if the product is available cheaper elsewhere. In most online sectors there are tight margins where products may vary in price by only a few pounds, so if the copy lays on the unique benefits of choosing that business and helps the prospect to feel more secure and at ease, then they can opt for that business and therefore contribute more sales for them. Even one or two extra sales per day through this method can equate to thousands of pounds in extra revenue per year.

If I'm looking for something that's not a simple consumer good, let's say some kind of business service, then I agree good copy would play a part, but the first thing that would hit me would be the overall impact & professionalism of the website. If it looks Heath Robinson, then the best copy in the world wouldn't save it, I'd be off - if it looks good, then I'd certainly expect it to be well written too.

I've actually seen a few websites which perform extremely well in-terms of response rate, but the pages are nothing more than blank or extremely minimalist in design with plenty of fine-tuned copy on them.

This will not persuade everyone, and you may be part of the audience which decides to look elsewhere, but that's why 10% is considered an impressive conversion rate in almost every sector and not 80% or 90%. You just can't win everyone over.

 

[Import Expert]

Some very interesting discussion points here.

I work for a large independent freight forwarder where I have been for just over ten years and we have seen some incredible growth over those years.

Having held a number of roles over the years (most recently Customs Manager for the Group) I was offered a complete change of direction around a year ago and entered the wonderful world of Marketing and am now the Marketing Manager for the Group. I deal mainly with the UK but also Ireland, USA and Hong Kong offices.

I am not ashamed to admit that I am completely untrained in this area and am almost doing things backwards - I've started 'hands on' and am only now starting some marketing courses and all the bits associated with learning your trade.

This is also a new area to the company. We have over 500 employees and have really only had a sales department until recently - so any marketing has been off the back of that or via a couple of companies we use for website/design/PR, etc.

Why I was asked to take on this role - Who knows. An ex Boss of mine came in and asked me. I have always had a creative side and am a bit of a nerd with data, which I guess are some of the elements of marketing. I have lots (and I can't emphasize that enough) of things to learn, but what I do have that I find incredible useful, is a pretty extensive knowledge of our customers, our company and our products.

Would love to hear your thoughts but having heard much 'cr*p' from various marketing agencies that we have had in, I personally find that this background knowledge is a great platform to build on.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Some very interesting discussion points here.

I work for a large independent freight forwarder where I have been for just over ten years and we have seen some incredible growth over those years.

Having held a number of roles over the years (most recently Customs Manager for the Group) I was offered a complete change of direction around a year ago and entered the wonderful world of Marketing and am now the Marketing Manager for the Group. I deal mainly with the UK but also Ireland, USA and Hong Kong offices.

I am not ashamed to admit that I am completely untrained in this area and am almost doing things backwards - I've started 'hands on' and am only now starting some marketing courses and all the bits associated with learning your trade.

This is also a new area to the company. We have over 500 employees and have really only had a sales department until recently - so any marketing has been off the back of that or via a couple of companies we use for website/design/PR, etc.

Why I was asked to take on this role - Who knows. An ex Boss of mine came in and asked me. I have always had a creative side and am a bit of a nerd with data, which I guess are some of the elements of marketing. I have lots (and I can't emphasize that enough) of things to learn, but what I do have that I find incredible useful, is a pretty extensive knowledge of our customers, our company and our products.

Would love to hear your thoughts but having heard much 'cr*p' from various marketing agencies that we have had in, I personally find that this background knowledge is a great platform to build on.

Congratulations on the role. It's very unusual for a company of that size to hire a marketing manager with no prior experience or knowledge in that area, but I'm sure you're just as aware of that yourself!

Drop me a PM if you would like any advice. The main bit of advice I'd give you right now is to just keep it simple. Some of the most reliable and successful methods of marketing are some of the most simple ones. You don't need to think too much "out of the box" whilst you're still learning.

 

[The Byre]

Would love to hear your thoughts but having heard much 'cr*p' from various marketing agencies that we have had in, I personally find that this background knowledge is a great platform to build on.

I think your number one task has to be research, research and then more research.

Some of the questions you will have find answers for include -

Size of overall market and size of market in all major economies.

Your market share in these.

Your main competitors' market shares in these. You would be amazed at the number of companies that do not know these three basic sets of figures!

You also need to benchmark the market for all aspects of your services (value for money, quality, etc.) Remember that this is done by asking open-ended questions and NEVER by listing products or marques. (And if some agency is hired to do this and they use lists of names, fire them and refuse to pay them a dime. Many do, but it is a massive mistake.)

You or your staff are going to have to ask oodles of questions and then weight these by purchasing power AND by future orientation. You MUST do both. For example, Sony Broadcast made the mistake in the 90s of only looking at what the major broadcasters were wanting and forgot to look at what one- and two-man operations were buying. As a result, they launched expensive digital-tape-based editing systems onto the market and within a couple of years, couldn't give them away, as everybody had gone over to computer-based non-linear systems that were cheap.

It will take many months of hard graft, before you have anything concrete. Good luck!

Same here with the PM - I spent many years doing this sort of thing and am only too happy to point folks in the right direction!

 

[UK Marketing Consultant]

I guess we need to define what marketing really is: "satisfying customers profitably" - That is where there effort should be though - iniquity traps abound - we therefore encourage "delivering sustainable excellence in service" this is where a business will grow. They will be excellent at what they do and will have set up their systems to ensure that profitability is party of giving an all round excellent experience! There is a lot of "lead hunger" out there which leads to a rather call and response approach to marketing.

 

[J Howard]

Marketing is done keeping in view the demand of the business. If someone has developed a business website definitely he wants a web advertising or SEO . The approach to the marketing does make a big difference.

 

[lindacotal]

its true
and i agreed with my friend
i here to add some thing that we have to find the niche market where we do advertise our business
printing and distributing ads without any research or home work is use less

 

[smartwebtek.net]

It`s true, but many customers are too hurry, they expect "results" at once ... and the results then are very poor.

 

[thetomwhatley]

I am often told how PPC campaigns don't work, when the client has simply hashed together a quick campaign and sent the traffic to a landing page not optimised to convert the visitors.

There's a lot of focus on the quality of what marketers are putting "out there" in this thread, which is important, yet the other thing that many marketers and business owners forget is going where their clients are.

For instance, PPC is all well and good, but if no one is looking for your products and services then is there much point focusing on it - especially if you're trying to encourage faster growth?

This is especially true for social media. Businesses put lots of effort building a presence on all networks, only to find one or two really move the needle for them. This is simply because the right customer isn't using that platform, or the way they use it doesn't align with their message (i.e. they don't want to consume the kind of content they're sharing).

This is where creating buyer personas comes in handy. If you really talk to your clients and find out where they get the majority of their information from (as long as it's related to your value proposition) then they've just handed you the channels you could focus on.

 

[japancool]

At the moment, I'm trying to find a way to make Twitter work for us as a marketing channel. Haven't found the answer yet though.

 

[NickGrogan]

What do you actually want from Twitter?

 

[japancool]

What do you actually want from Twitter?

A similar thing to what I want from Facebook. Exposure -> followers -> website visits -> sales.

However, it's become clear that the same sort of strategies don't seem to be working. The followers we are getting are mostly non-UK, so aren't our intended audience.

 

[telabadmanwot]

If what you mean is 'I want free marketing' you will get what you pay for, hahaha.

What is your business, product or service? Social media is not very successful for every business type.

 

[NickGrogan]

Are many of your customers on twitter, looking at the English speaking competition it doesn't look like it. I would aim at tumblr instead, probably more relevant.