Copywriting Tips for Effective Marketing

Effective copywriting is about having a good mix of SEO copywriting skills, online writing skills, and a solid understanding of your target audience and your overall marketing objectives.

Good copywriting can help your content get found, convince people to buy your product or service, and convert readers into fans. In other words, good copywriting is essential to successful marketing.

Here are some of our favourite tips for effective copywriting.

Know your audience. Having an understanding of your target market will help ensure that your message is accurate. Ask yourself, who is your audience? What do they need? What is your competitive advantage or benefit to your audience? Make sure to direct your copy at your readers with personal statements and pronouns, like “you” or “we”.

Do keyword research. Get your content found by usng keywords to increase your SEO ranking. To start, look at your site’s analytics and see what keyword phrases visitors are using to come to your site. Think about your audience, what keywords would they use to find your content?

Use tools like Google Insights for Search and Google’s External Keyword Tool to view trends in search terms and get keyword suggestions for similar terms that you may not have thought of.

Optimize headlines, subheads and summaries with keyword phrases. Once you have your keywords, use them in your headings, subheads and summaries. Read over your copy and see if you’ve included your keywords and find ways to incorporate them without changing the meaning of your copy.

Optimize meta data (meta titles, meta descriptions & URL tags) with keyword phrases. Include your keywords in the following:

• Meta titles: This is the text that appears above the URL in the browser window. It is also the text used by search engines to display links on a search results page. Users are more likely to click on a page title that includes their search phrase or keywords.
• Meta descriptions: These are the tags that appear in the head section of website code. The meta description of each page should include a keyword-rich description of the content on that page. Search engines often use this description as the text blurb in search results.
• URLs: You want to have keywords in your URLs that match a possible search phrase. This is because users are more likely to click on a link that contains their search phrase. 
• Heading tags: It is important to use keywords in your heading tags, because these tells search engines whether the content on the page is relevant to a user’s search. .

Tell a story. Identify the story within your product or service - what is compelling or remarkable about what you are trying to sell? Create something worth talking about, tell the people who want to hear it, and they will spread the word. 

Pinpoint a problem, then solve it. What problem is your audience experiencing? What difficultly are they having? Position your product or service as a solution to this problem.

Provide authority and social proof. Your content needs to be credible. Use success stories and testimonials to provide proof to what you are saying. Include credentials, experience, authority statements, degrees, rank and/or fame.

Another tactic is to make readers feel like they are missing out. “Don’t be left behind…” or “Have you heard? Everybody is talking about…”

Use numbers. Numbers catch readers’ eyes, particularly when they’re scanning copy on the web. As Ken Beaulieu from FuelNet points out, using numbers to evoke emotion can be very effective.  “Harry and David, the fruit growers in Oregon, talk about their pears by saying, ‘Not one person in a thousand has tasted one,’” says Robert Bly, author of The Copywriter’s Handbook. “Putting it that way makes it sound exclusive.”

Make your copy rational.List the reasons why your audience should buy your product or service. People need justification for their purchasing decisions.

Create a sense of urgency. Create a sense of urgency around your copy. Stress uniqueness, limited quantities or deadlines for taking action.

Urge commitment and consistency. Appeal to a reader’s previous actions. “Since you’ve read this, than you may be interested in…” Urge readers to be consistent in their behaviours. “In the past, you’ve enjoyed the Boxcar Marketing blog so I know that you’ll be interested in our whitepaper…”

Be a Friend. Write your copy as a trusted friend. Be likeable and position yourself as a peer of your reader.

Use logical organization. Can readers easily scan the copy to see if it is relevant to them? Do you have a clear call to action? What do you want your reader to do? Have you made things easy by offering limited choices, a clear benefit statement and clear paths through the content?

Once you’ve followed these tips, Mequoda’s Housekeeping Checklist is useful for finalizing your copy:

• Check spelling.
• Check for consistent style. Example: email vs. e-mail, etc.
• Check all hypertext links and button copy for benefit-laden call to action. Example: [link]Yes, I want prize-winning azaleas.[/link]
• Read aloud. Does the copy sound as though it is being spoken by a real person? Is it warm? Friendly? Reassuring? Remove or rewrite any commands that sound threatening or scolding.
• Put aside for at least an hour—overnight is better.
• Reread. Rewrite. Re-edit.

What’s the Difference Between Organic and Campaign Landing Pages?

Ion Interactive held a landing page optimization webinar in August, where they highlighted the differences between organic landing pages and campaign landing pages. These differences are important to keep in mind when creating and optimization your own landing pages.

Organic Landing Pages:

• Are pages on your site.
• Need to appeal and work for everyone.
• Should be focused on the lowest-common denominator.
• Should be optimized for global, organic traffic.
• You have little control over the message.
• Work with closed-ended experimentation.

Campaign Landing Pages

• Are pages that are created for a specific purpose.
• Have a specific message and receive specific traffic.
 
• You have total control over the message, placement and the link behind the message.
• Should be optimized for your highly targeted, campaign-specific traffic.
• Need open-ended experimentation to get better conversion rate and quality. You need to test, learn, and adapt.

Campaign landing pages need to be hyper-local. You should be developing different, context-specific landing pages for different campaigns, different groups, different search engines, and different traffic sources.

For example, if you were advertising for a French language-learning series you would need to have a different message for your three different audience groups:

Students who are learning French because they’re required to: “Ace your French exams”
Travelers who want to learn French for a fuller travel experience: “Experience France as only a French speaker can”
Business People who are short on time: “Business French in 10 minutes a day”

Because your different audience groups would all buy the product for different reasons, the landing page that you direct them to should reflect their different needs.

For more on landing page optimization watch the webinar.

Online Video Tips and Tools

Crissy, the Boxcar Marketing intern, has been working on a number of video projects this summer, and we wanted to share our tips and tools with you.

Video on the web is used for much more than entertainment. For businesses, it can be a great way to get your marketing message out — video content is the most commonly shared type of content online. Below is a list of tips and tools on using video for marketing.

Getting Started

Content and sound quality are the most important elements of online video. That said, you do not need expensive equipment or a high production budget. Check out Craigslist.org for used equipment and experiment with free editing software like iMovie and Windows Movie Maker.

In terms of content, decide what kind of video you are going to make. Will it be informative, entertaining, shocking, funny? The more entertaining a video is the more potential it has to go viral. On the other hand, an informative video might be more useful to your audience. Decide on how you want to position your brand. And remember, short, concise and less scripted videos are best.

Posting Your Video

Post your video everywhere! The more places it is, the easier it will be found. Some sites to consider:

blip.tv

YouTube

Flickr

iTunes

Or use a service that will post your video to all of the video sharing sites for you. For example, Visible Measures or Tubemogul.

Optimizing Your Video

Optimizing your video is key if you want people to find it. Using descriptive, straightforward keywords in your title, description, and tags will help your video show up in relevant search results.

Make sure you promote your video! Once you have uploaded it to a video sharing site, use the embed code provided to post your video on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and your blog. The great thing about embedded video is that it can be posted in multiple places, and unlike text, Google does not have a duplicate content penalty.

Analyze

Why make a video if you do not analyze and track its success? Here are some tools to use to see who is watching your video, where they are coming from and what they are finding engaging about it:

YouTube Insights

blip.tv stats

Plus, Visible Measures and Tubemogul provide analytics across multiple video sites.

Resources

How to Use Online Video for Inbound Marketing by Hubspot. Hubspot hosted an excellent webinar that covered content development, equipment needed, editing and publishing, optimization, and analytics.

How to Make YouTube Videos Look Great by Squidoo. This Squidoo article tells you how to encode, compress or optimize your videos to get them to look their best.

Make Internet TV is a step-by-step guide to recording and publishing online videos. This is a great site. It covers everything: equipment, shooting techniques, video tutorials for using editing software, licensing explanations, publishing options and ways to promote your video.

Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources by Mashable is excellent. They cover online video how-to sites; online video editors, converters, sharing and hosting sites; vidcasts and vlogging; video mashups; mobile video apps; video search; and online video downloading services.

Video SEO Tips and Techniques in the Reelseo collection includes tips for beginners to advanced users.

How to Use Online Video for Inbound Marketing

HubSpot recently held a webinar on how to use video for your online marketing campaigns. Here are some of their tips.

Content

There’s a content tradeoff. You can either make an informative video with lots of information for the viewer or an entertaining video that catches viewers’ attention and has the potential to go viral.

Short is sweet. Focus on the first ten seconds of your video and try to do something shocking or entertaining to rope people in.

Use an outline, not a full script. You’ll be much more engaging.

Test your video on friends and coworkers and edit it according to their responses. If they don’t find your joke funny, chances are your online audience won’t either.

Optimization

Publish and promote everywhere. You want your video found!

If you upload your video to either Visible Measures or Tubemogul , they’ll upload it to all of the different video sharing sites for you and provide you with analytics, too.

You need to decide if are you going to optimize your video for SEO (by using straight-forward keywords) or for viral (by using enticing keywords). Tip: start with a viral title to make the video popular and then change it to a more keyword-rich title to make use of its long tail potential.

Post your video on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and your blog. Encourage co-workers and friends to post it on their blogs too.

SEO

YouTube

* Use keywords in your title and description. Include a link to your website in the first couple of lines of the description so that viewers see it when the description is collapsed.

* Tags are important. Although they’re not visible on the public video page, they govern what videos your video shows up.

* Encourage people to rate and comment on your video. Controversial content is one way to spark discussion.

iTunes

* Make sure that the title, artist and description are keyword-rich.

* Use an appealing image to stand out on the search page.

* Ask viewers to review your video to increase its popularity.

Analyze

Analytics are crucial! Why make a video if you don’t measure and track its success?

Use YouTube Insights or Blip.tv Stats to see who’s watching your video and what they’re finding engaging about it. You can also use Visible Measures or Tubemogul, to see your analytics across multiple video sites.

For more information watch the full webinar and download the slides.

Looking for related information? Check out Steven Witten’s article Six Degrees of YouTube, a case study of online competitive video dynamics, which looks at how YouTube’s ‘related videos’ list gets built and the effect this list has on a video’s popularity.

How to Write Good Web Copy

Commune Media has an article on their site that offers tips on how to write copy for the web.

The article offers some step-by-step advice on writing copy for the web and links to other tips and a free e-book. Some good, sound advice.

Tips on Beating Writer’s Block

or What to Write When You Are Wiped

I must say that July has been a hectic month. I have been in 4 different cities. A new place each week.

My favourite was Portus 2008 in Dallas where I spoke about the phenomenon of podcasting and participatory culture within the Harry Potter fandom.

(Do you know about Wizard Rock? Rock music based on books ... that is another post. But if you want to divert your attention, you can see my guest post on TechVibes where I give a quick summary of my presentation.)

After a month of travel, with all the best intentions of posting a great Underwire Newsletter ... I am stumped. So here are 3 things that I do when I need to pull a blog post out
of a hat or generate a press release out of thin air.

1. I scan the daily news headlines
Is there anything going on in the world that is vaguely related to my clients’ products or services? If yes, I can usually get enough inspiration to write a blog post or press release.

2. I go through my clippings folder
Ok, I do not have a physical folder, it is an electronic folder. But throughout the day, as I find interesting newsletters or blog posts, I make a note of them for writer’s block moments.

3. I look at my site traffic and the most popular sections
This can provide interesting points for casual conversation (like the fact that our post on graphical user interface prototyping tools continues to draw strong traffic). And it means that I can recycle some content. Check out our nerdy list of Graphical User Interface prototyping tools. See how fun that was.

Bonus Tip. I research silly quotes.
As Terry Pratchett says: Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

Writing Online Press Releases

Online press releases can be an effective way of reaching journalists, bloggers and industry-related media sites. With online distribution your press release
may also end up on popular news aggregator sites like Google News and Yahoo News.

Still unclear about why you want to write an online press release?

1. To Drive Traffic to Your Site
A well-optimized press release can show up in organic search results as well as news results. And some services also distribute press releases as RSS feeds, which can get pulled as headlines into other subject-related websites. This means that someone searching for your type of products or services might discover you through organic listings, news listings or by RSS.

2. To Write the Stories You Want Told
As traditional print media struggles with cutbacks to funding, which means the loss of reporters and original, local news coverage, companies writing good press releases, with interesting and compelling stories, have an opportunity to attract online coverage as well as interest from journalists using online resources for story ideas and research.

Here are a couple of Online Distribution Services

PR Newswire: Big name, good reputation. Costs is $500+.

Business Wire: 8-10 percent less than PR Newswire. Also a big name with a good rep.

PRWeb.com: My favourite so far. This is an email-based service. Journalists and bloggers get a daily email with industry-specific or interest-specific headlines. Approx. $100+ depending on what type of features you want.

OpenPR.com: A free service. Ads are displayed beside your press release, which is okay unless your competitors advertise online.

Have a press release service to recommend? Post it here.