The Marketing Mix | official blog of the Marketing Mentor community

How to avoid being a bad KISSer

In our quest to KISS, you know "Keep it simple, stupid." do you think it's possible to keep it too simple? In one of my recent email blasts, "Beware the KISS of death," I wrote about good KISSing form. Today, my focus is the bad. Yes. Bad KISSing. I see it all the time. Just the other day, I found the three examples. They were so simple that I almost missed them - and that right there is the problem.

You see, in marketing communications, simple and predictable often translates to "dismissible," i.e., something readers can scan and ignore in order to save time. But that's the exact opposite of our job as marketers. Our role is to make people think and remember our product or service, right?

That leads me to the hidden downsides of "keeping it simple." Chief among them is that you risk wasting your budget and effort on prospects who are ignoring you. And in the long term, you can erode your brand's relevance by being simply uninteresting.

In the interest of helping you avoid becoming a bad KISSer, I'm happy to provide you with my list of ways that marketers often "keep it simple" incorrectly:

• Becoming overly-fixated on word count. If it's engaging, readers are just as likely to read 20 words as 2.
• Opting for simple Jargon, those oh-so-convenient words that everyone in the industry uses so much that they are meaningless. "Value-engineered" is one of my favorites. Sure, they're concise and easy. But you use them at the sacrifice of saying something memorable or meaningful. Right?
• "Dumbing down" to the level of a 12 year-old or whatever year-old. People hate being talked down to. It's a simple truth.
• Using line-item lists of features that have been cut and pasted-in verbatim from some other piece of communication. Look at the context (website? brochure? newspaper ad?) and customize the copy.
• Believing in magic solutions. For example, one or two words that say everything, offend no one, and work no matter what. They rarely exist. When you find one, it's usually jargon (see above.)
• Lastly, beware the ideas that gain the greatest consensus around the office. Opting for the lowest common denominator gives you the lowest risk-but it also gives you the lowest opportunity for extraordinary success. Some good ideas just can't gain a quorum.

In our business, keeping it simple doesn't always guarantee success. You have to look at the whole picture. And when that's not enough, it helps to have another option in your backpocket.

 For more tips like this, sign up to receive Conrad’s newsletter “a little something from backpocket copywriter” at www.backpocketcopywriter.com/tips.htm.

World’s Best Subject Line

If you're like me, you probably strain over what to put in the subject line of your e-blasts. You ask yourself:

"What will compel people to open it and not delete it?"

"How do I make sure my email passes safely through spam filters?"

"Is there anything I can do to make sure people know it's from me and not some freak in a dingy back room in Karachi?"

Your subject line, and your attribution line—you know, the "from" of your email—are worth straining over. Because if that adage "if they don't read your headline, they won't read your ad" is true for print (and it is) it is 100 times truer with subject lines.

In the case of subject lines, the listless, the over-hyped, or too-familiar end up being trashed before they even have a chance to become an email—or worse yet, they spur people to opt out or tag everything from you as junk.

Let's not let that happen. Here are some tips I've learned from writing emails for the likes of Audible.com, CENTURY21, and last week's Thinking Creatively Conference.

• Keep it to 69 characters (including spaces)
• If you have to go over in characters (long subject lines display, but not as well) put the important stuff first.
• Don't be redundant; put your company name in the "from" line and don't repeat it in the subject line.
• Try packing a benefit to your recipient in the subject line
• Action verbs are best, e.g., learn, see or start.

Rather than writing a general line about all the great stuff inside the email, highlight one exciting detail.

For more tips like this, sign up to receive Conrad’s newsletter “a little something from backpocket copywriter” at www.backpocketcopywriter.com/tips.htm

 

6 Online Writing Mistakes

I know many of you are working on content for websites and online newsletters. If you want to keep your prospects from clicking away, check out this post Deidre wrote for the Market It Write Blog, called: 6 Online Writing Mistakes that Make People Click Away.

The Market It Write blog, brainchild of Marketing Mentor client, Mistina Picciano, contains many tips to help you “unleash the power of the pen.” Subscribe to the Market It Write blog here.

How I got over perfectionitis

Do you have perfectionitis too? I often talk about the quest for perfection in my blog posts, and how even though I know it's impossible to achieve, it still drives me crazy!

Check out this fantastic guest post from freelance writer, Jean Feingold, about how she cured herself of perfectionitis:

In Deidre Rienzo's blog post, she mentioned her difficulty with perfectionitis, the fear that anything written down that wasn't perfect wasn't worth writing down. I used to have that problem when I first started my professional writing practice. Every article I wrote was edited, scrutinized, rewritten, and tweaked multiple times, sometimes so much so that all the life in it drained away.
 
But that was in the days when I had little work and was overly eager to establish myself. The solution to my desire to have every word and phrase be perfect was spending time as a correspondent for United Press International wire service. This was rewrite work, taking news from local sources and putting it in my own words in their desired format. I was expected to write 1,500 to 2,000 words daily, seven days a week. Pretty soon I learned how to recognize writing that was good enough. Even when I could tell it wasn't perfect, there was no time to dwell on it. Not only that, what they were paying, if considered on a per word basis, was far too little to justify perfection.
 
As a result, after doing this work for a few years, I became a very fast writer, composing at a rate of something like 30 words per minute. I had learned how to get to the essence of the topic, tell the story, and move on. This skill makes it possible for me to say "yes" to every freelance assignment I am offered and to volunteer to take on more because I know that once I get the information, the articles will almost write themselves.
 
The only time when the temptation to do more than is needed creeps in is when business is slow. I find myself editing too much out of some misguided desire to impress the client. What I have to remember is this - if the clients could write it themselves, they would not have hired me!

Jean Feingold is a freelance writer whose Gainesville, FL-based company, Business Communicators, is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Her work has appeared in trade publications in varied industries in the U.S. and Canada.

Do You Have a Manuscript Ready?

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More info here: http://writersdigest.com/annual

How to Inspire Creativity

Welcome to Week 13 of my adventure of following the Start Up Version of the Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar. In my posts, I talk about my voyage down the road of self-employment as a VMA, my achievements and roadblocks along the way, and I include a weekly recap at the bottom of each entry.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately.  I’ve been writing content for websites, articles, newsletters, and press releases.  And I love it.

What a great feeling to produce a finished product that really rocks, especially when it took some actual thinking to get there.  I love that feeling of accomplishment.

But writing sure does require a lot of creative juice.

I’ve noticed lately that the more writing I do, the more aware I am of my creative resources—as abundant, or drained as they may be at the time.  I know there’s a big creative audience out there at the Marketing Mix.  I have a lot of respect for people who create, (I’m awed by artists, designers, song writers, novelists, and anyone who produces something from nothing) and I’ve always wondered, how do creators stay…well, creative? 

I’m trying to figure out how to keep my writing juices flowing.  Here’s what I’ve noticed helps me so far:

All signs point towards poor marketing?

PAMPARED PETS

This was the headline on a sign I saw for a dog walking service when I took Charlie to the dog park this morning to play with his buddies.

My first thought was, "These people can't spell; how could I let them walk my dog?"

Now, logically, there is no connection between spelling and dog walking. I'm sure there are plenty of excellent dog walkers who can't spell. So why did I jump to that conclusion?

Because I am very quick to judge and the sign is all I had to go on to make my judgment. And I believe this happens a lot on the World Wide Web. When what you see on a web page about a company isn't perfect, it's ever so easy to make a harsh judgment. (Do you do this too?)

I think we need to be a little more forgiving on the one hand, and a little more attentive on the other. Spell check doesn't catch everything (although "pampared" is not a word, as far as I know). But when I think about how quickly I'm typing and how tempting it is to multitask, I do hope others will be more forgiving of me than I often am of others.

I know I'm not alone. At least once a week, I hear someone say they won't work with a resource because there was a typo on their web site. Have you ever done that?

How long should your email newsletter be?

Clients are often asking me how long their email newsletter should be and I usually say, "Shorter is better."

In fact, when people tell me they love my Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor, I ask them why and the first thing I almost always hear is, "Because it's short."

So you would think that an effective email newsletter should be short, right?

Not necessarily. I know several people who put out longish email newsletters that people do read because they are either really well written or they have useful information (or both!). Colleen's newsletter, communicatrix | focuses, is one of them. Bob Bly's Direct Response Letter is another. It's chock full of tidbits every month. You can read as much or as little as you like.

I always recommend you start with something short. Then, as you get more ideas and as people become accustomed to your writing and your style, lengthen your text as you see fit.

And remember, you can always write a bit then link to a place on your web site or blog where those interested can keep reading.

Who are those ladies behind the curtain?

If you're interested in a peek under the hood of Marketing Mentor, this post is for you.

Last week's tip took much longer to write than usual. What readers actually received was a complete rewrite of the original tip I sent to my "testers" -- the 5 colleagues who generously provide much-needed feedback to me every week. (BTW, if you'd like to be part of that group, send an email message to me at ilise at marketing-mentor dot com and I'll tell you how it all works.)

Anyway, here is the original tip and Colleen's question to me that I was having trouble answering. I thought I'd throw it out to the blog, to see what you all have to say. So please comment.

Here's my original tip:

Last week, when I gave my presentation, "Is Your Personality Preventing Your From Moving Ahead?" for the RGD Ontario, I suggested telling success stories to describe how what you do helps your clients.

Afterward, a few people asked me the same question: how can I tell success stories without bragging?

Here's what I said: focus on the facts.

If you say that something you created won an award, that's a fact, isn't it?

If something you wrote or designed achieved a 20% response, that is also a fact, even if saying it feels like bragging to you.

If I tell you that I drank champagne with a client recently to celebrate the biggest job he's ever won -- and he got it as a result of a cold call, is that bragging?

And if I say he won it because I taught him how to make those cold calls, is that bragging?

And what if I say this: "A client won his biggest job yet because of a cold call and he credits my mentoring for teaching him how to do it right." Is that bragging?

Here's Colleen's response:

(Is there a better way to) ramp up to a statement like that? If I can see the progression, it might not seem like such a sell. Right now, it feels inorganic: like you're selling (which you are, but it seemed to me like you wanted to say the selling can be invisible.)

The only way I can see this line working organically is if someone has specifically said, "I hate cold calls. I can't imagine you'd be able to teach *me* to do them."

And then you could reply, "I don't know. That's what another client of mine said two months ago. But last week, he..."

Like that. It's the windup. Out of nowhere, all the lines feel bizarre to me. In the right context, they can all work.

What do you think?

Post your articles on Biznik

Remember last year, when we introduced you to Biznik, the great new networking web site for independent professionals with the extremely memorable tagline: business networking that doesn't suck?

Well, they've just launched a new section on the site called "Learn," where members can not only read but also post their own articles.

So for anyone with material to recycle (especially the clients I've been nagging about re-using all that great email newsletter content into articles that can get more visibility and therefore increase your search engine rankings), check  out the how-to. or the section itself.