Read this terrific article by marketing consultant Kristin Zhivago on creating effective marketing copy.
She states that there are two problems with the typical approach to Web copy. First, little of it is “even close to useful.” Second, “since everyone writes the same copy, using the same old tired words and phrases, customers have learned to ignore it.” I cringed as I read the rest of her article, which is spot-on and provides seven tips to guide marketing copywriters.
The tragedy of copy that doesn’t do the job whether that job is to drive people to a Webinar registration, or urge them to engage your sales team, or compel them to drill down into your site is that quite often, it’s not for lack of talent or resources. It’s because the objective and audience haven’t been clearly defined at the outset of a project, and therefore the execution of the message is fuzzy because the strategy isn’t in place. Or, the team isn’t in agreement on how to communicate about the product or service. What does it accomplish? What problem does it solve? So trying to highlight its benefits in a compelling way is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall, and the copywriter eventually gives up and falls back into clichés and what Zhivago calls “-able” words (scalable, capable, reliable).
Go check your own Web site. Does any of this sound familiar?
A few weeks earlier I’d cringed, for different reasons, when I came upon an ad for Kodak Single Use cameras in our Austin newspaper. This is a case in which the message is all too clear: “We have no choice but to define our product in terms of the product that has replaced it.”
When your best argument for using film cameras is because you left your digital camera at home, it might be time to hang up your keyboard.
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