Syntax Dance

6 ways a poor brand identity will cost you sales

Javen — 2006-07-13T06:11:43-05:00

Our culture is getting more marketing savvy everyday. We can't help it, what with the near 24/7 bombardment of advertising and messages that we're exposed to. It's just not possible to give our full attention to every single message that comes across to us.

So how does a small business get heard? One way is to have a solid, professional brand identity. For smaller businesses, the establishing of a successful brand identity often falls toward the bottom of the priority list. Mostly because they can be kind of a pain, and even worse, they come with a price tag.

I saw Jay Lipe speak at a small biz convention in Minneapolis earlier this spring, and he's got a new book coming out in September called Stand Out from the Crowd: Secrets to Crafting a Winning Company Identity. He's published an excerpt on his blog that addresses this very topic.

He has three very good examples of what can tarnish your brand identity:

A poorly designed website that takes too long to load, and is difficult to navigate.
A sub-par logo and brochures and business cards that lack professionalism.
Front-line employees like receptionists or customer service reps who lack good service skills.

Jay's right when he says that if any potential customers get any sense of doubt about your business's ability to execute, they won't hesitate to look elsewhere.

Don’t undermine all of your company’s other efforts by shooting yourself in the foot with a slapdash company identity. If you forsake developing a truly professional and consistent brand identity for your company, your buyers will:
Experience doubt about your company.
Be confused about what you do.
Fail to understand how your company helps them.
Be indecisive about doing business with you.
Distrust what your company says.
Perceive a gulf between what your company says it does, and what it does.
In short, the very foundation for any company’s marketing effort lies in first establishing a standout identity. With one in place, your company will earn trust faster, benefit from more positive word-of-mouth, enjoy more frequent referrals, attract larger numbers of buyers, craft a more professional image, grow awareness faster and motivate buyers to take action more quickly.

Make an effort to shore up the lapses in professionalism in your identity. Your website needs to read and navigate well. Your marketing materials need to be professional in voice and appearance. It will be a non-trivial outlay of time and money, but one that your customers will definitely notice.

---
Smart Marketing

3 Questions That Make Irresistable Headlines

Javen — 2006-06-27T07:11:06-05:00

Most people don't read past 5 words of a headline, let alone the content that follows it. So you need to make your headline count. One of the most successful strategies is to focus on arousing the reader's curiosity by asking a question in the headline.

Curiosity is a driving force behind much of what we humans do with ourselves. It drives decisions and motivates change in behavior. If your headline taps into that curiousity, you've got your reader hooked.

But how do you do it?

A good question.

No, really. That's the answer. A good question will make a reader curious enough to invest the time to read further. So how can you use this tendency to your advantage when composing your headlines?

in his book, Question Based Selling, Thomas A. Freese describes a whole new approach to sales and marketing based on asking questions. In a chapter focusing on how to generate curiosity in a prospect, he's found that he's been much more successful selling by first piquing the prospect's interest and then moving into positioning his products value, instead of trying to sell based solely on the features of the product.

It's a losing battle trying to get attention just by stating that you're the best or by trumpeting facts about your product. The headline isn't about reciting your product's features, and if it is, it's just going to get drowned out by the noise in our marketing-saturated society. You need to do whatever you can to get your prospect to read your material. And the question is one of the most effective ways to do just that.

What are the 3 types of question-based headlines?

In his book on copywriting, U.K. marketing expert J. Jonathon Gabay outlines the three different categories of questions that you can utilize to create attention grabbing headlines.

1) The Simple Who?
Gabay splits the question Who? into two parts. The simple Who? includes the question explicitly in the headline.

Who wants ice cream?
Who does fish better than the rest?

2) The Testimonial Who
Why a testimonial considered question? Because the 'who' in question is asked by the reader. Who is this person and what do they have to do with the product? Why did they like the product? Quotes and testimonials are very effective selling tools. They reduce the perception of risk, and if you've got a celebrity giving the quote, they can get you a little more attention based on name recognition.

However, it can backfire on you. The statement must be believeable, and the language used must be appropriate for the source of the quote. If not you run the risk of your potential audience rolling their eyes in disbelief, and that means they aren't reading your piece.

3)The What, Where, and How?
This category encompasses the remaining types of questions.

How does free cable sound?
What $100k in water damage compared to the satisfaction of doing it yourself?

There are a few things to keep in mind when using standard questions. Avoid the self-answering questions and questions with explicit yes or no answers. The point of the headline is to entice the reader by promising to answer the question later in the copy, or even if they know the answer, you want to tease them a little.
Gabay uses the following examples of how not to write your question headline:

Are you overweight?
Would you like some life insurance?

These are dull, and they don't get people to read past the headline. If you feel driven to use this type of question in your headline, you can sometimes avoid the pitfall by answering the question in a sub-headline. Gabay, a Brit, has a great example of a subhead:

Are you overweight?
Call us. We'll start saving you pounds over night.

What 3 things do you accomplish by using a question based headline?
Here are the three things that you as a copywriter will accomplish when you use a question in your headline:

1) Questions arouse curiosity. We want to know the answer. By starting with a question, you've gone a long way toward getting your prospect to read on. Ask a question, and the reader naturally wants to know the answer.

2) Creates a predictable response. You can take advantage of our marketing-savvy world by stacking the odds in your favor that your audience will respond with curiosity, but that curiousity will be guarded. "Interesting...What's the catch?" is the reaction you can count on.

3) Copy can be written to address the question and the reaction, making the most of the opportunity to reach your reader.

By using a question in your headline, you can stack the deck in your favor. There can be lot of punch packed into a simple question. Take a look around and see just how the pros use that question mark to hook you and take advantage of that curiosity.

----
[Sources]
Teach Yourself Copywriting, J. Jonathon Gabay
The Copywriter's Handbook, Robert W. Bly
Question Based Selling, Thomas A. Freese

One-stop inspiration for web design

Javen — 2006-06-19T06:27:26-05:00

When it comes to deciding on the visual design of your site, you should invest some time in brainstorming some qualities that you want this 24/7 marketing tool to have. Not a big revelation.

But when it comes time to actually deciding on a look for your site, it's amazing how your brain no longer remembers any of the hundreds of sites that you've visited in the last few days. It's hard to just start to surf with that specific mission in mind.

That's why CSSBloom has instantly earned a spot on my reading list. It's a collection of recently published websites that's updated several times a day. It's a good place to go in order to specifically look at websites for their design and get ideas from the current generation of sites finding their way to the web.

Spend less time hunting and more time getting inspired.
---
[CSSBloom]

6 Steps to Organized Website Content

Javen — 2006-06-09T14:49:05-05:00

The fact is that content is what drives your website. Lucia Mancuso has written a very good synopsis of the process of designing the architecture of the content of your site. It's not easy to create a site that's useful. You need to know exactly what it is that your website is going to do for your customers and your business.

One of the most important elements of every website/ blog site is its content. Content is the key factor that your viewers are looking for.

Brainstorm on all possible topics, content, subjects etc… that you may write about on the site. Don’t do this in any order; just let your mind run with it and write down everything that comes to your head. (I like to do this and walk away from it for 24 hrs and then revisit it again).

No matter what industry you're in, your business needs a website. That much we all agree on. But web design isn't where the journey begins and ends. It's what your visitors are looking to learn about you is just as crucial.

---
Organizing Content for Designing Information Architecture - [The Blog Studio]

A Little Grammar Never Hurt Nobody

Javen — 2006-06-07T13:41:56-05:00

There's an article has been making its way around the net today that really wants to help you.

Grammar's no fun and it's a right pain, but not paying attention to what you're saying, especially when you're tapping out an important email in a rush, can hurt your credibility.

These days, we tend to communicate via the keyboard as much as we do verbally. Often, we're in a hurry, quickly dashing off emails with typos, grammatical shortcuts (I'm being kind here), and that breezy, e.e. cummings, no-caps look. It's expected. It's no big deal. But other times, we try to invest a little care, avoiding mistakes so that there's no confusion about what we're saying and so that we look professional and reasonably bright.

Take some time to read it through, and while you're paying attention to the grammar of what you're saying, you might just catch some other mistake and save yourself some grief.
---
10 flagrant grammar mistakes that make you look stupid - [ZD Net UK]

Business Cards: A User's Manual

Javen — 2006-06-05T08:23:19-05:00

Business cards are incredibly useful marketing tools, but their importance is often downplayed or sabotaged by not taking the time to make them really do the job that they're capable of doing. Chris Brogan writes a good, short and informative article about the life cycle of the business card, from creation to the hand-off to the processing of received cards.

Cards are Good Conversation Starters- If your card isn’t plain white or doesn’t look like you used a built in MS Word template, people will often look at your card the way one looks at a four-year-old’s rendition of a fire truck. “Ohhh, this is gooood.” They nod as they say this. People want to acknowledge you and what your card says you do. It’s almost a ritual thing.

---
The Business Card Game - [lifehack.org]

Easy Websites from Microsoft, Google

Javen — 2006-06-02T08:00:44-05:00

It's no great revelation that the Internet is a good thing for a business. Giving your customers and prospects quick and anonymous access to information about your business is pretty much a must-have. However, the price of entry from a knowledge and skill point of view might appear a little steep and somewhat intimidating.

There are a few options out there for the non-savvy, including an offering from Google and from Microsoft. While the Google option isn't really ready for business use, Microsoft's Live Office looks like it was built with the small biz in mind.

Microsoft's Live Basics is a new resources for businesses to expand into webspace with free websites, free hosting, free email, access to an array of traffic tools, and "free" domain names.

Unfortunately, you can only sign up and access it with recent version of Internet Explorer, so Mac users are left out (which means that I'm left out). But the consensus from the techie arena is that this isn't such a good deal.

There's also some question re: the offer on the digg.com comments board about how easy it is to transfer your name away from the vendor that MS uses to register and manage the domain names.

Here's a summary provided by digg poster C2H5OH.

1. + It's a product like Google Page, which allows you to create webpage easily.
2. - It does not allow you to code your page. (Is it because the generated code is too ugly? If Office 12 generates ugly HTML, I guess this one does, too)
3. + It allow you to use your own domain
4. - Transferring domain out in the future is virtually impossible
5. - Insanely expensive: $50/yr for a domain

And for good measure, here's the meaty part of a Google Pages review by Tam Hannas

It’s NO replacement for a common web hosting service, but it is almost PERFECT for users who want to publish their last holiday photos or theirselves. They need no knowledge about web hosting and HTML developing.

---
Office Live - [Microsoft]
Google Pages - [Google]

Lessons Learned From Microsoft's "People_Ready" Ad

Javen — 2006-06-01T08:02:29-05:00

I'm a Mac guy, and while there's a part of me that giggles with glee at the stumbling and bumbling that's going on at Microsoft, I'll do my best to retain a professional demeanor while I pick apart a recent bit of marketing fluff that they've produced.

Microsoft has two major products that everyone knows about and everyone probably touches everyday: Windows and Office.

But their marketing leaves a lot to be desired. It's a pretty good example of how not to do things.

The trouble is that their stock is dropping. What's more, they have a major product release on the horizon, the next gen of Windows called Vista, that has suffered greatly in the tech press. A combination of feature atrophy and backpedaling on the release date has gotten the techie crowd folding their arms and sitting on their wallets.

Not that the techie crowd is Microsoft's cuddliest group of fans.

But, don't feel sorry for them quite yet. Their profits are still huge, (they made just over $1 billion per quarter in profits last quarter) so they have lots of money to throw at the problem before things get dire.

Their biggest problem is that their only competitor of any significance is themselves. They want you to abandon the previous version of their own software and buy the new version. That's the way they're going to make their next dollar.

So there are question marks in Microsoft's future. But if that's the case, then why are their efforts at marketing their products falling well short of the mark?

John Gruber of Daring Fireball recently wrote an article about an ad that MS ran in the 5/22 issue of the New Yorker. He posted a photo of the ad and transcribed the copy, and then asked a pretty significant question when it comes to marketing a technology product: "What the hell does any of this even mean?"

Welcome to the people_ready business.

In a people-ready business, people make it happen. People, ready with software. When you give your people tools that connect, inform, and empower them, they’re ready. Ready to collaborate with partners, suppliers, and customers. Ready to streamline the supply chain, beat impossible deadlines, and develop ideas that can sway the course of industry. Ready to build a successful business: a people-ready business. Microsoft. Software for the people-ready business. To learn more, visit microsoft.com/peopleready

If you can get through the paragraph, it's not difficult to see Microsoft's intent, but there's nothing that's driving a call to action. Gruber calls this ad "timid", and he's right. The gist is that Microsoft products will empower your employees, getting them ready to work. And, hey, that's a good thing. It's a benefit.

But "our employees will be more ready" doesn't quite provide the fire you want to light under your target audience. With ad copy, you want to use language that will get people tapping their feet because they can't buy it fast enough. Have a message. Say it clearly. That's the goal. Did your eyes glaze over when you read that big ol' chunk of copy? Mine did. I would have skipped it entirely if I wasn't in analysis-mode.

Take a look at the Microsoft piece; how many times does the copywriter use the word "ready"? "People"? What about the "Ready to something, something, and something" pattern? Repetition is powerful...when used correctly. But here, the sentences all start to look the same. Too many commas, too many ideas strung together, too much repetition. Blah. Skip it.

Are your customers skipping your content because it doesn't grab their attention? Does your copy motivate your customers to buy your product?

---
Confidence Game -- [Daring Fireball]

Eyes Are Windows To Attention Span

Javen — 2006-05-31T07:22:44-05:00

Seth Grodin took a look at an eye tracking video that analyzed what websurfers looked at when they were reading a page designed by Squidoo.

It's interesting to see the different patterns that different readers have. Some are very liniar and some flit all over the screen. There are important lessons to be learned from this study. Grodin points out the one that's most applicable to this blog:

The biggest lesson wasn't news to me, but it might be to your boss: your prospects are not rational and organized and linear. You can't count on them sitting still and hearing your story from beginning to end. They won't.

The answer is not to try to change human nature. It's to embrace the hunting skills that people are bringing online (and to their daily offline media consumption) and to make your media match their needs.

Objectivity is difficult to maintain when you're trying to write and design for your own business and still effectively communicate what's important to your customers in a way that will get and keep their attention.

But bringing in outside creative talent, like a designer or copywriter, can help to maintain that objectivity and create effective marketing materials.
---
What I learned from eye tracking - [Seth's Blog]

Like A Pirate

Javen — 2006-05-30T07:13:29-05:00

Pirates are really big these days, thanks to Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean and national holidays like Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Chris Brogan of lifehack.org took his admiration a step further and began to see the true wisdom hidden the ways of the pirate lifestyle in his article, Work Like A Pirate.

Pirates Live by Results
Plundering, pillaging, and other pursuits aside, pirates are all about getting results. They don’t get paid without a lot of up-front hard work. If you are a pirate, you are striving to accomplish a big score. There are perils, risks, and all kinds of ways that the job can fail. It’s a lot like being part of a startup, only pirates have swords, patches, and parrots.

Taking things a step further, Mike Sigers of Simplenomics remixed Brogan's idea in his vision, Sell Like A Pirate.

A Pirate Is Not His Ship
Your product or service is only the start. What you can do for or with the customer is the real product. Benefits are the reason we buy anything. I bought a new masonry drill bit because I wanted a hole thru my bricks for my Dish Network cable, not because I wanted the new drill bit.

Learn to sell the end result and not the features and you won’t spend as much time on each sale or worse, as much time lost on not selling.

Pirates didn’t always have the best ships, but they still stole a lot of loot. Even if you’re not the big dawg in your industry, if you’re smart enough, you can still make a boat load of loot.

Lessons Learned From Global Warming

Javen — 2006-05-24T08:49:47-05:00

Seth Grodin’s written an interesting article that discusses one probable cause for our lack of initiative to stop global warming: bad copywriters.

Global is good
Warm is good
How can "global warming" be bad?

In his own reaction to Grodin's article, Brian Clark draws a comparison between the marketing of global warming's impact and the marketing of your business.

In today’s business environment, it’s not enough to have a story. It’s got to be a vivid, engaging story that connects at an emotional level. Anything less may well lead to disaster.

Are you choosing the right words to tell your story and sell your product?

---
The Problem With Global Warming - [Seth Grodin's Blog]
How to Avoid the Pollution Plague - [Copyblogger]

Email Authoring Tips

Javen — 2006-05-23T17:28:43-05:00

Matt May from Blue Flavor has served up an email authoring tutorial that demands worldwide circulation.

Popular as it is, the web is not the most-used Internet application by transaction volume. Email is. It's also the most misused. Since it's such an important and often overlooked component of our online lives, I'm going to step away from preaching about the web for a moment and focus on simple steps to make your email discussions more effective.

He targets the following sore spots in today's e-messaging habits:
• Brevity
• Context
• Something to act on
• Reasonable expectations
• A deadline

---
Email: an author’s guide - [Blue Flavor]

Forbes' Best Small Biz Blogs

Javen — 2006-05-18T07:34:39-05:00

Hunting around the 37Signals blog archives, I found this in a link from just about a year ago:

---
Forbes' Best Small Biz Blogs

Sell the Sizzle

Javen — 2006-05-16T09:08:15-05:00

Attention Retention
Everyone’s heard the one about the steak and sizzle. It’s an old salesman’s chestnut, but that little chestnut holds a lot of truth when it comes to marketing and persuasive writing.

Your goal as a marketer is to gain and retain the attention of your audience. In the media saturated environment that we live in, a big old list of facts and statistics just isn’t going to hold anyone’s attention for long.

Think back to that teacher you’ve ever had, the one who just read out of the book. Technically, the subject was being taught. But how much of what the teacher said actually stuck? Not very much. And how interested were you while you were in class? Not at all.

But what could you do? You were a captive audience. If you’re trying to sell a product, you don’t have the luxury of an audience forced to sit and listen to your pitch. Would you use the same techniques as that teacher in order to sell your product? If you were the potential customer, would you be buying based on the litany of facts and dates?

Probably not.

Focus On The Customer
A rule of thumb that should always have in the forefront of your mind when marketing is that the focus should be on your customer.

Everyone likes to be the subject of the discussion. It gets us more engaged in the conversation and strokes the ego a little. “Hey you!” always gets our ears perked up.

The challenge is this: You’re marketing your product, right? So how do you keep the focus of your material on the customer but still promote your product? You talk benefits. Facts and stats focus on your product. Benefits focus on what your product does for your customer. Simple as that.

Determining Your Product’s Benefits
Here are a few examples of features vs. benefits using a few items that are on my desk:

iPod
Feature: 40GB hard drive
Benefit: Load up your entire music collection and take it with you.

Phone Headset
Feature: Hands-free, over-the-ear design
Benefit: Type and talk at the same time

USB-Powered Scanner
Feature: Draws power through the USB cable
Benefit: Fewer cables to clutter up the office

What are your product’s benefits? Figuring that out might sound easier said than done. So here are a couple of ways to determine your product benefits.

Copywriter Bob Bly describes a method of generating a list of benefits in his book The Copywriter’s Handbook. Take a blank sheet of paper and divide it into two columns. In the right hand column, list a feature of your product. Then ask yourself “What about this feature most benefits those who use it? How does this feature make the product more attractive, useful, enjoyable or affordable?” Go through this process for each feature, and you will end up with a list of benefits.

Another interesting method is written about by Barbara Findlay Schenck in Small Business Marketing for Dummies. Write out a feature. Add “which means”. And then finish the sentence. So you end up with something like, “Steaks are 100% Black Angus beef which means it just tastes better than our competitions’ steaks.”

All Benefits, All The Time?
So, as we’ve discussed, the trick is to focus on bringing forward the benefits of your product. But is that the only thing you should include in your marketing communication? For most products whose target audience is normal, everyday people, yes. Listing features will muddy the water and glaze eyes more often than they’ll peak interest.

An exception is made if you have a technical product, or your target audience is made up of specialists who would be turned off by a lack of hard data when you’re pitching your product. In these cases, you’ll want to consider stirring in a blend of facts and stats to your benefits. For example, if you’re selling a monitor to graphic design professionals, you might want to work something like this in: ‘15.4 inch TruColor monitor with a max resolution of 1900 x 1024, so you can see your work and your customers see the results.’

But it’s rare to see an example of persuasive writing that only focuses on features. It’s just too dry. And there’s too much competition out there for you to risk boring your potential customers.

---
Related Reading:
http://www.bly.com/Pages/documents/TFOPW.html
Small Business Marketing For Dummies (Amazon)

Illusion of agreement

Javen — 2006-05-09T09:51:41-05:00

Via 37Signals: Signals vs. Noise

Lessons from the Red Rubber Ball

Javen — 2006-04-29T10:48:37-05:00

Here is an interesting list of Marketing and Writing lessons that Matt @ 37signals put together after reading some of the promo stuff for the book called Rules of the Red Rubber Ball (Amazon.com)

Via >> SvN

These Shoes Are Made For Marketing

Javen — 2006-04-20T09:50:25-05:00

They say that your first step in marketing communication is made In the shoes of your target customer. You need to figure out why they need the product or service you're trying to sell. Then you need to figure out the best way to go about convincing them to buy it.

How do you figure this out?

Ideally, you would have a team of high-energy market researchers who would jump headfirst into the task, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and staying up all night long, never slowing down until they presented you with the manila envelope brimming with the key to market dominance.

Don't have a team like that? Then you'll have to work with what you have. Ask your sales force and ask your customer service people. They've had direct interaction with your customer base, and they'll have discovered quite a bit about the people who buy your product. Lacking that, go with your instincts. If they're wrong, then make the appropriate adjustments, and get it right.

You'll learn to speak their language. You'll learn what's important to them. You'll learn what they know about you. Step into their shoes and determine what about your company and your product will get them to take out their wallet.

Customers...what do they know?

Here are a few questions that will get you started thinking about your target customer:

What do your target customers know about you?

Have they heard of you?
Do they know what you do?
Do they know how or where to buy your product?

And if they already know you...

What do they think of you?
What do they see as your position in the market? Could they pick your product out of a line-up?
Do they have a clear idea of your brand?

What's the Point of Blogging?

Javen — 2006-04-17T09:48:09-05:00

What's the Point?

I was at a meeting of freelance writers and editors earlier this month and one of the attendees posed this question to the group: "What's the point of having a blog?"
The asker lamented the sad state of blogs, calling them rambling instant soapboxes for anyone who can sign up for a free account. Why would anyone want to waste their time writing, let alone reading, blogs?

The Short Answer: Marketing
When it came my turn to answer, I ran down a list of a few things that I have learned about blogging and how they are excellent marketing tools, not only for those of us who work in the writing business, but for anyone who has skills and talent that they wish to market.

Five Answers to "What's the Point of Writing a Blog?"
Answer 1: Your blog can be one of the seven needed points of contact that potential clients can touch when learning more about you. You got your card, your sign, your ad, your website landing page, your phone call, your face-to-face, your blog...that's seven, isn't it?
Answer 2: To establish you as an expert in your field, building credibility through the simple fact that you can write intelligently about what you know.
Answer 3: Networking! People read your stuff and can quickly and easily establish a dialogue with you.
Answer 4: To put yourself in line for a big break! Get your unique idea, your clever thought, your new meme out into the information stream and be prepared to take advantage of your 15 minutes of fame. Start a movement with a single blog entry. Which leads me to the next answer...
Answer 5: To Get Googled. The Internet is becoming the primary information gathering resource for anyone looking for anything. Make it easy for people who are looking for you to find you. Google likes blogs, and a well-phrased article title will put you at the top of long results list.

On a related note...
This is a good article from the Boston Globe. It's an interesting piece that makes the bold claim that blogs are rapidly becoming a necessity for a successful career.
Via A New Marketing Commentator

The Creative Brief

Javen — 2006-04-12T07:44:54-05:00

Briefly, The Creative Brief

If the first step in creating a successful marketing communication is deciding WHAT your project is going to accomplish, this creative brief explains HOW it's going to do it.

This is a vital component to develop when you're working with a copywriter, but even if you're going the DIY route, the creative brief is a must-have. Without it, you'll be unvaccinated against The Vague Plague, enemy of all copywriters, everywhere.

Avoid Vague Like The Plague

Symptoms of the Vague Plague include, but aren't limited to the following:

1. Unclear information
2. Misinterpreted facts
3. Unspecific ideas

Ask Your Copywriter About A Creative Brief

The Creative Brief is the inocculation you'll need to fend off the Vague Plague. The Creative Brief is simply a list of questions intended to help you focus on your goal.

When I'm meeting with a client for the first time, I email them a variation of my creative brief a few days before we're scheduled to sit down together. I do this for a couple of reasons:

1) To let them know what we're going to be talking about during the meeting, so it's not a complete surprise
2) To get them thinking about their project.
3) To make the meeting a little easier for the both of us: I understand what they're hoping to accomplish, and they understand what information I need to help them accomplish it.

Ideally, if I've done my job well, I'll walk out of the meeting with a fully formed creative brief in hand and I can start work on the project immediately.

Here's the list of preliminary questions I use to generate a creative brief:

Syntax Dance Quickstart Questionnaire

About the Company:
What makes your business, product or service unique?
What are your company's short- and long-term goals?

About the Competition:
Who is your major competitor?
Where do you rank in the industry?
What do you do better than the competition?

About the Target Audience/Customer
Who is your target customer?
What issues are important to your customer?
How does your product benefit your customer?

Marketing:
How do you currently market your product?
Do you have company tagline or slogan? Have you considered creating one?
If money weren't a factor, what would your ideal marketing campaign be?

Project:
Who is the target audience of this project?
What are their 'hot buttons?'
What is the purpose of this project?
What are the main points to convey in this project?

Simple Writing for Easy Reading

Javen — 2006-03-28T10:42:32-06:00

Simple writing is difficult to pull off. Making a complex topic 1) readable and 2) understandable poses a huge challenge, as anyone who's tried to read any sort of technical manual knows.

The most important thing to do in your writing is consider your target audience. Stack the odds in favor of them taking the time to read what you've written and understanding what you've said. It's becoming more and more important to bring your message in the simplest terms possible and to take advantage of every tool at your disposal to help your audience digest it.

Write Bite-sized

People are busy, and there is a lot of noise out there, a lot of badly or "ramble-on-and-on" writing. It's easy to click away or trash the message if something isn't catching the eye. This article from the Inside Firefox blog stresses this point, and gives some good examples of things to keep in mind when writing:

Making important points up front
Clear taxonomy of headings, and lots of them
Writing clearly and succinctly
No long, unbroken paragraphs or tracts of text.
Preferring bulleted lists with clear points to paragraphs.
Use of emphasis in formatting to make important things clear

Write Basic

Comprehension of your message is another major consideration in your writing. An article in Brian Clark's Copywriting 101 series includes a very sad statistic taken from a recent college student literacy study:

A study released today shows that more than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges in the United States could not:

• interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure;
• understand the arguments of newspaper editorials; or
• compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees.

Taking the time to write succinct, well-organized material will pay off, because it is quite likely that your target audience will fall into one of the two categories.

---
Copywriting 101

3 Ways to Establish Credibility with a Business Blog

Javen — 2006-03-16T09:39:24-06:00

A high-priority goal when initiating a relationship with a prospect is the establishment of your credibility. Without credibility, it's nearly impossible to move past the first stage. You need to demonstrate that you know what you're talking about, that you're trustworthy, knowledgable, and that you'll be able to solve problems.

Being able to write well about a topic is a good way to demonstrate your knowledge and bring your own unique perspective forward.

A blog is a cheap (or even free) of getting your voice heard, and one of the great advantages of blogging is the way that they play very well with search engines, so anyone popping a searchword into Google stands a good chance of bringing up your blog and reading what you have to say.

They say write about what you know, so get out there and put your unique selling points out there in your own voice.

3 Techniques to establish your credibility with a blog

Write about what interests you in your field. Enthusiasm is infectious. If you're passionate about what you do, it'll come through in what you write and add to your credibility.

Write commentary about the industry. Demonstrate your expertise by providing your expert opinion.

Provide useful information for your readers. Ideally, it's information that will lead your customers to realize that the service you offer is valuable and meets a need or solves a problem.