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Over the last decade, I've seen web lead quality go right down the toilet. Lately, only one in a thousand is worth having at all. You waste more than half of your lead generation budget without a comprehensive approach.
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Over the 4th of July weekend, I had the opportunity to visit Toronto and noticed something interesting. It didn't click until I was driving along an overpass in Richmond VA last weekend.
What was this strange observation?
Continue readingChances are sales people are busy, marketing resources are limited, and training is considered an expensive burden. It is unfortunate for most business-to-business firm that they believe this way, because employee training and development is the most cost effective way to increase productivity.
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Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.
What’s In It For Me?
Patrick Quinn
Many well-meaning writers on the subject of copywriting are happy to tell you that the headline is the single most important element of any ad, brochure, website and so on. Which, of course, it is.
They also tell you that the headline must be so cleverly framed as to practically force the reader into the compass of the body copy. Which, again, it should.
But it is right there that the commonsense comes to a stop. Because they then go on to offer you a formula of some kind along the lines of: ‘Ten Ways To Write Killer Headlines', or ‘Eight Sure-Fire Methods For Creating Copy Impact'. Some even go so far as to say something like: ‘If You Can Write A Headline Like This, You'll Be A Cash Millionaire This Time next Week.' The latter is usually accompanied by a sample headline that, take my word for it, would get most ad agency trainees fired on the spot.
Let's clear the decks. There are no formulae, no quick tricks, no lazy ways to produce a good headline. A good, selling headline depends for its success on just one simple ingredient – a statement of benefit. Meaning a benefit inherent in the product or service that the consumer will reap if he goes out and buys it.
Every product or service has a benefit. If it hasn't, why is it being produced? Thus, the best headlines, those that move product, say to the reader: ‘Buy this product and get this benefit.'
Simple, isn't it?
END.
Patrick Quinn is a copywriter, with 40 years' experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. Over the years, he has helped win for his clients just about every advertising award worth winning. His published books, include:
The Secrets of Successful Copywriting.
The Secrets of Successful Low Budget Advertising.
Word Power 1, 2 & 3.
© Markethill Publishing 2005.
For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here.
Advertising Tips
This article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.
Patrick Quinn
You might describe me as a progressive reactionary. The progressive in me is as eager for new ideas and new techniques in advertising as a young beagle chasing its first hare. But the reactionary in me tends to view innovation with the kind of sour suspicion with which Scrooge greeted Marley’s ghost. Why? Because a lot of what is new tends to be clever – and, all too often, too clever for its own good.
I’ll explain. The public, at whom the mass of consumer advertising should be aimed but often isn’t, aren’t vastly interested in cleverness as a whole, let alone cleverness of copy and art. The kind of ad that the average person considers to be good is apt to be the kind of ad that causes the average copywriter and designer to feel like reaching for the Prozac. This, admittedly, is a sorry situation, but it is one of the sad facts of life.
And it is to the average person that we look to spend the money to buy the products we advertise and keep us in meat and potatoes with an occasional splash of gravy. Why is it, then, that a large proportion of advertisers (terrestrial and internet) set out to make fools of their target market by feeding them material that they patently won’t understand?
To prove my point, take a look around you at the huge number of ad illustrations that have no bearing whatsoever on the product. And also at the myriad headlines which, likewise, have no bearing on the product. The sales message, if they have one, is lost within the slickness of the design and the obtuseness of the copy story.
The advertisers concerned may be overawed by the beauty of their artwork and the cleverness of their words, but they are convincing nobody but themselves. And if the consumer fails to understand the sales proposition at first glance, he will very quickly go and spend his money with someone else.
Quite right, too.
END
For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here. https://www.adbriefing.co.uk/
Patrick Quinn is a copywriter, with 40 years' experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. Over the years, he has helped win for his clients just about every advertising award worth winning. His published books, include:
The Secrets of Successful Copywriting.
The Secrets of Successful Low Budget Advertising.
Word Power 1, 2 & 3.
© Markethill Publishing 2005.
For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here. https://www.adbriefing.co.uk/
Advertising Tips
This article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.
Patrick Quinn
I think it true to say that industrial advertising, the sort that fills the pages of the thousands of technical and semi-technical magazines, is the most neglected of all advertising types. You only have to flick through the pages of publications like Bulk Handling International, or Building Services & Environmental Engineer, for instance, to see that advertisers are nowhere near as clever with their promotional work as are their counterparts at the consumer end of things.
Continue readingThis article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.
HOW TO TEST YOUR HEADLINES
Patrick Quinn
A correspondent to AdBriefing, my monthly newsletter, has posed a very sticky question. How, she asks, can you tell whether a headline you have written is a good one…or not? What she means by this, I imagine, is whether the headline will actually help to make sales, rather than just act as a passing amusement to its readers.
Obviously, there is no absolute test. If there were, we benighted copywriters would be earning ten times what we are earning now, on the grounds that our work would be foolproof.
But there is a test – a very good test – that you can apply to any headline you create. I call it the ‘So What?’ test.
Allow me to give you an example of ‘So What?’ in action. If you produce a headline that says: Our Widget works twice as fast as any other Widget, and then ask yourself ‘So What?’, it immediately becomes clear that the line is bereft of a sales proposition. Because there is no obvious benefit to the potential customer.
On the other hand, if you write: Our Widget works twice as fast, so you do the job in half the time, then the ‘So What?’ has been answered. Your customer can cut his production time by 50%.
Likewise, were you to write: Our Widget is so small, it fits into the palm of your hand, you simply invoke ‘So What?’. Which results in: Our Widget fits into the palm of your hand, so it goes wherever you go. In this case, the benefit is portability.
Over the years, I have found the ‘So What?’ test to be invaluable. You might care to give it a try yourself.
And on the subject of headlines consider this.
When trying to write a headline many people tend to go off half-cocked. They consider the marketing brief, then bash down a headline or two to satisfy it. After that, they write the body copy.
Experience shows, however, that if you write the body copy first, the odds are that there will be the makings of a headline within it struggling to get out.
Body copy is, or should be, a carefully worked and logical encapsulation of the marketing brief. In other words, the whys, the wherefores and the benefits of owning the product or service. It makes sense, then, that if it is properly written, there is a very real chance of finding an embryo headline lurking within it.
Why not give it a whirl? You may be agreeably surprised.
END
For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here. https://www.adbriefing.co.uk
Patrick Quinn is a copywriter, with 40 years' experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. Over the years, he has helped win for his clients just about every advertising award worth winning. His published books, include:
The Secrets of Successful Copywriting.
The Secrets of Successful Low Budget Advertising.
Word Power 1, 2 & 3.
© Markethill Publishing 2005.
This article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.
IF YOU CAN’T BE ORIGINAL, BE ACCURATE
John Powell
I’ve just been reading Pat Quinn’s revised book, The Secrets of Successful Copywriting. In it he says you can always take an old idea and give it a new lease of life with a simple twist. But he warns, make sure in doing so that (a) you’ve rehashed the idea with some originality, and (b) you don’t tear the fundament out of it.
This advice came to mind when I popped out for a pub lunch the other day. The pub in question is part of a nationwide chain which is running a promotion whereby, if you buy two glasses of wine, you get a third free.
They are promoting this splendid offer via a poster campaign throughout the chain; and a very nice, and expensive poster it is too. A2, full colour, with some very crisp photography of a bottle of wine and a half filled glass. So far so good.
Now I can only assume the copywriter who wrote the poster was sick to death of the hundreds of ads and supermarket point-of-sale materials that tell you Buy this and get this free – so he or she went for what they misguidedly thought was originality and came up with the alternative headline:
BUY 3 FOR 2.
Is that improving on?
Buy Two Glasses Of Wine
And Get One Free.
Perhaps my brain is addled with too much wine, but it seems to me the reworked headline is confusing, whereas the well used version leaves no room for doubt about what’s being offered. And my opinion seems to be borne out by a quick chat with the lovely bar girl. She told me that 8 out of 10 customers who order a glass of wine have to be told about the offer. In my book this means that the pub chain could have saved a fortune on posters.
Oh, one more point about the poster. The guy or gal who wrote it came up with a curious tagline. Underneath the pic of the bottle and glass of wine it says:
Quench your thirst.
Hardened tippler, I may be. Potential coach for the English Olympic drinking team for sure; and I await the phone call from the Committee with cheerful confidence. However, I’ve never thought of dowsing a thirst by guzzling wine. This is a case, I feel, of writers having no idea whatsoever about the motivations of their target market.
You drink beer to quench a thirst, but you drink wine in order to develop a nice, warm buzz, along with an eloquence that startles even you.
Therefore, a more pertinent tagline might have been:
Drink up – your third glass is on us.
Come to think of it, that would probably have made a far better headline!
For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here.
© Markethill Publishing 2005.
Advertising Tips
This article is brought to you by AdBriefing.com. Our aim is to produce a library of informative pieces that contain copywriting tips, marketing know-how and lessons in good advertising practise.
HOW TO BUY BAD ADVERTISING
Patrick Quinn
I have had an e-mail from a gentleman with something on his mind. Since what is irking him may be of general interest, he has been good enough to allow me to dissertate on it right here. As a matter of fact, it’s of a touch more than general interest, because his is exactly the kind of account that the freelances among us earn our bread and butter from. So it could be a lesson learned.
The gentleman in question is the advertising manager of a Midlands engineering company with a total promotional budget of around £200,000. Of this, some £150,000 is spent through an ad agency. Up to a couple of years ago, our friend had been using a local agency which, he says, ‘gave us excellent service; but their output of ideas and their general standard of creative work left a lot to be desired’.
Accordingly, not without a good deal of heart-searching, he moved the account to a medium-sized, up-and-coming London agency with a strong and growing reputation for creative originality. Has everything turned out fine? Not particularly. He is not getting the same kind of ‘we’ll be around in five minutes for the brief and have some scribbles ready for you in the morning’ service that the previous people gave him. Nor has his present agency exactly set the Thames on fire with its standard of work.
Yet, he says (and here’s the nub of it) they are doing some outstanding work for other clients of theirs. Therefore, is his appropriation too small for them to bother about? Has he jumped from provincial frying pan into metropolitan fire? “In all fairness to them,” he ends, “ours is a rather difficult account which presents special problems.”
Well, let’s take the service angle first. If someone lives on your doorstep, and if your business represents a sizeable slice of his turnover, obviously he is going to hop around to you quicker and jump to your wishes more smartly than someone who is 200 miles away and to whom your billing is relative peanuts. This argument is sustainable despite the convenience of instant communication via e-mail and intranet because, generally speaking, clients do like to see on a regular basis the people who are working for them. It’s something of an anachronism, but it’s true. After all, an e-mail can’t take you out to lunch or allow you to win on the squash court – if you see what I mean.
Something else. Practically any given agency will feed to practically any potential client a yard-and-a-half of eyeshine about all its accounts, large or small, getting an equal slice of the service cake. But, let’s be sensible, the smaller a client is, the bigger the pinch of salt he needs to take this with. The point is too obvious to be laboured.
And now for his second point. Although ‘ours is a difficult account which presents special problems’ is a familiar cry, it is seldom as true as it is cracked up to be. Everyone thinks his business is unusual and complicated. In advertising terms it rarely is.
What this guy should really be asking is why the agency concerned is producing second-rate work for him, yet is doing first-rate work for others. Either he is not getting his fair whack of their creative talent, in which case a little determined hell-raising in the right quarter will work wonders. Or he is not allowing the agency to live up to its capabilities. I don’t know which it is, of course; but if I had to bet blind, I would put my money on the latter.
So here’s the moral to this sorry story. All advertising, when you really come down to basics, is in the hands of people called copywriters and designers. This applies whether the people in question work for agencies or for themselves as freelances. There generally ain’t no difference in work standard or commitment. I know for sure that the sad experience of my correspondent is by no means a singular one. It is being repeated daily up and down the country. It therefore follows that what these hundreds, possibly thousands, of ad managers really need is nothing more than a good, local freelance writing/design team which knows a thing or two about client service.
A freelance team, unlike an agency, has minimal overhead; and its fees will, or should, reflect this. And because a freelance team works for itself, it will almost certainly be hungrier and therefore more conscientious than its agency counterparts.
Were I the ad manager of a company, I would choose a freelance team rather than a local agency every time. Likewise, were I the ad manager of a company with a modest budget, I would steer very clear of big-ambition metropolitan agencies. And when it came down to it, I would far prefer to have lunch or play squash with my nubile secretary than with some hairy artist.
Therefore, if you are a member of a creative team, does the local industry know where to get hold of you? Do they even know you exist. I am conscious that writers and designers are notoriously bad at promoting themselves; but on the basis of what we’ve just heard, there is a huge market here just waiting to be tapped. So tap it.
END
For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here. https://www.adbriefing.co.uk
Patrick Quinn is a copywriter, with 40 years' experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. Over the years, he has helped win for his clients just about every advertising award worth winning. His published books, include:
The Secrets of Successful Copywriting.
The Secrets of Successful Low Budget Advertising.
Word Power 1, 2 & 3.
© Markethill Publishing 2005.
For a free monthly newsletter with copywriting tips and tutorials, plus advertising and marketing know-how, just click here.