So when Maja Pawinska Sims came and spoke at the Horsley Network on Monday night on Ten Steps to Sparkling Marketing Copy I knew I just had to share her steps with you. Speaking as someone who is writing copy for a new Flourish website right now I promise you they are incredibly useful! What I love most about Maja’s approach, is that she is doing for words what we do with imagery. She’s writing to build a brand voice, just as we build a brand image.

Maja’s Ten Steps to Writing Sparkling Marketing Copy

1. Values

Before you even try and put pen to paper, I would recommend you establish your core values. If you’re running your own business, your personal values and your business values are likely to overlap. Values are attributes that you hold dear in your life, from integrity and service to innovation or creativity. With many of my copywriting clients, I start off by doing this classic coaching exercise (just email me onmajapawinskasims@gmail.com for a free copy of this exercise). Once you’ve identified your top five or six values, they are a really useful benchmark when you’re producing written materials, to check that what you are communicating is in tune with what your business is really about at its heart. When you run your business – and talk about your business – in a way that is consistent with your values, you have what is called an authentic business. Authentic businesses tend to be successful because they are a genuine extension of who you are, your skills, and what you care about.

2. Brand Personality, Tone and Style

Add another layer of insight by defining your brand personality. You could work with some more coaching questions, such as:

• What do you want to be known for?
• What differentiates you, and your business, and makes you stand out from everyone else with a similar background, experiences and offer?
• Imagine you are 80 years old. What would you want people to say about you and your professional achievements? What would you like your legacy to be? What would you like clients and employees who have worked with you over the years to say about you?

Then think about the voice of your business. Are you formal or informal; professional, friendly? Do you want to be seen as small and personal, or more corporate? This will inform what’s called the tone and style of the language you use in your written materials.

3. Target Audience

We’re still not ready to write. The next step is to define who you are talking to.

• Who are your customers and clients now, and who do you want to be working with?
• What do they need to know from you?
• What problems do they have that you can solve for them?
• What are your key sales messages for them?
• What is the perceived quality and value of your brand in the minds of customers: are you the cheap solution, the good value for the money solution, the high-end, high-price tag solution?

 4. Your Mission Statement

One more step before we start drafting. I review a surprising number of websites where it’s not at all clear on the front page what the company does. I would suggest you make sure you are happy with, or write, a clear one or two sentence description of your business. Who are you and what do you do? Even if you have this sort of written boilerplate already, go back and review it after doing the values and brand personality exercises. You may also want to take another angle and think about how you would describe to a child, or your mum, what you do. Think in terms of using real language rather than the way you think your should describe what you do, or what everyone else in your sector says.

5. Start Writing

Now you’re ready to start drafting your copy. Bearing everything you’ve defined and discovered about you and your business by going through the first four steps, you’ll hopefully end up with a first draft that sounds like it could only be about you and your business, and really communicates the experience of what it is like to work with you. Check your drafts against your values, brand personality, your chosen tone and style, and your boilerplate description.

6. Edit Out The Bullshit

This is the bit I’m really passionate about. Go through your drafts or your existing marketing copy, and strip out all marketing bull and corporate jargon. Be honest about whether there is any way of expressing yourself more clearly or succinctly instead of the phrases you and your sector might always have used. Cut out meaningless words like ‘unique’, or ‘solutions’. Avoid generalisms that could be about any business: I received a press release this week that started ‘In the words of Bob Dylan, the times they are a changin’. I still have no idea what company it was for, or even what industry.

Use language carefully and precisely – well written copy is extremely powerful.

7. Clarity

Check your second drafts for clarity. Would your child or you mum or best mate or gran understand what you’ve written? This isn’t about being simplistic or dumbing down: it’s about explaining clearly in a way that will resonate with your target audience. There is an argument that journalists on the Sun are more skilled than those on the Telegraph because it’s harder to explain tricky concepts in universally-understood language.

8. Consistency

Once you’ve established your house style and settled on a way of expressing what you do that feels right, check for consistency across all your marketing materials. Don’t produce a really chatty, cheeky special offer flyer if your website is very formal-sounding, for instance. This applies to social media as well: LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook count as written marketing collateral too, and your voice should be consistent across all of them.

9. It’s Not All About You

Focus on your customers and clients, not just on yourself. Check that every Tweet and every sentence in your website doesn’t start ‘I’ or ‘We’ – turn it around so you are showing your potential customers and clients what you can do for them. This links back to the point about defining your target audience and understanding what problems you are solving for them.

10. The Basics- Grammar and Spelling

Proof what you’ve written and double check grammar and spellings. It might sound basic, but a misplaced apostrophe can put people off. Avoid capital letters other than at the start of sentences and for proper names. Write out numbers one to ten and write 11 and above in numerals. Get rid of any exclamation marks. Spell out any acronyms, especially the first time you use them, and keep them to a minimum. Read what you’ve said aloud and check it flows well and sounds right.

Finally, know when to stop editing – there comes a point where your drafts have to be good enough, and you just need to get that essential bit of your marketing arsenal signed off and winning business for you.

About Maja

Maja Pawinska Sims is one of the most inspiring people I know. She is an excellent copywriter (and has worked with us on a number of projects at Flourish) and has a real knack of writing copy that really resonates. She’s not a “beat-em-round-the-head-with-a-wet-fish” type of copywriter, she’s more subtle than that. But her stuff is powerful, inspiring and it really works. You can find out more about Maja professionally at be-sparkle.co.uk

Not only that, but over the last eighteen months she has fought (and I mean, fought, she is one strong lady) breast cancer whilst running her business and bringing up two very small children. Inspirational stuff. You can read about her journey with her two small children and the dreaded C word at her pinchypants blog. Make sure you have some tissues at the ready…

Imagine arriving at a stately home or (my favourite) a boutique hotel. You walk in through the front door and instantly feel at ease. The beautiful decor, fresh flowers and welcoming receptionist ready to look after you. You’re welcomed and invited to be guided to your room, shown to the bar or the spa. It’s a great start to a wonderful stay.

I always think that a website’s homepage should be just like an entrance hall to a stately home. Warm, welcoming and easy to navigate to where you want to go next.

Some websites give you too many options on the homepage and it becomes overwhelming (imagine the receptionist saying – I can show you to your room, the spa, the bar, the restaurant, the golf club, the tennis courts, the croquet lawn, the beach, the… – you get the picture – you forget what she said at the beginning!).

Other websites leave you standing there – leaving you to find your own way through the “house”. That’s why we’ll almost always use navigational bugs on the homepage to guide people around a site.

Worst of all… imagine after a long drive arriving at the stately home. Rather than asking how you are and showing you what you need to find, the owner shakes you by the hand and starts telling you his life history. Yawn!

Are you with me so far on this analogy? Your homepage isn’t the place to tell people about your business – save that for your about page. Sure – they need to know what you do – they need to be sure they’ve come to the right place. After that, talk to them about their challenges and how you help, you’ll find you get a much better response.

Your homepage should welcome, guide and show visitors on to the meatier parts of your site. A bit like an entrance hall!

Image: Brockett Hall

Why do you click on About Us pages when you’re browsing a website? Idle curiosity perhaps? A desperate attempt to find out who this company is and what they do? A desire to find out more about the person or people behind the brand and connect further?

In my case all of the above apply at different times.

I’m the first person to say that the copy on your website should be about your customer and their challenges rather than your business. But the same rules don’t apply to your About Us page. Your About page is your opportunity to talk about yourself as much as you darn well please.

It’s a bit like being at a party. You do all the right things – ask the right questions, listen, strike up a rapport and then the other person asks you about yourself. You need to answer! On your website your About page is your perfect opportunity to reinforce your brand position, qualify why you’re ideally placed to provide your product or service and most importantly, connect with your reader.

Vicki Knights, the photographer at the top of this post, does this brilliantly. She talks from the heart – reassures me, provides a little about herself that I can identify with and also explains (without boring me) why she’s qualified to do what she does so well. Importantly, she’s also got a great photo – eyes at the camera looking relaxed, engaging and reassuring.

Take a look at your About Us page – is it easy for people to see why they should do business with you? Can they see, literally see, who is behind the business? And have you reinforced your brand position?

Yes in that writing for the web forces you to take account of the search engines and making sure that what you’re writing reflects what people want to know. But a big, fat, enormous no in that to write truly powerful copy you simply *have* to write for your customers and not for yourself. Great copy attracts, engages and galvanises people into action.

Great copy answers questions that your readers have; shows them that you can solve their problem/ inspires them and entices them to put their trust and hard earned cash your way. It’s very simple really. And to be honest, writing for the web should be no different to writing for your readers.

Sure, you need to make sure that your website gets found. But if you understand *at the outset* what people are looking for in your niche; what people want to know about your product or service then it really isn’t rocket science. Now I’m telling you all this as a copywriter, not as an SEO expert (which I don’t profess to be). But just think about it for a moment. Truly bad copy (and we all see plenty of that about ) often starts out with a headline that bears no resemblence to what follows in the paragraph below. Writing for the web forces you to stay focused. If you want to get found for bespoke kitchens in Surrey; well then you need to make sure you use those words in what you’re writing. And so that it makes sense to the humans that are invariably going to read your website if your SEO ninja tricks pay off; then you need to make sure that the whole paragraph, or better still the whole page is around that theme too – just so that it makes sense…

I’m currently writing two pieces of copy for Stanbrook and Nicholson, a local joinery company based in the Surrey Hills. One is for their brochure, one is for their website. I’m pretty well placed to write this at the moment because we’re currently in the process of starting an extension, so I know exactly what their clients want to know.

I started by writing their brochure. Izzy and I planned out the structure a couple of weeks back, I interviewed the team and we’re now in the process of writing up. I still find it easier to write for people first – call me old fashioned but I have more love for them than robots. We’ve decided that the brochure is going to let the pictures do the talking so it was all about writing short, sharp, evocative paragraphs that told a story.

I then translated this to their web copy. Web doesn’t bring the space constraints with it that printed literature too – so we can allow ourselves the luxury of a few extra pages – more detail on the team and their environmental policy perhaps. It’s at this point that things start to get a bit more focused. With the help of my (now friend) Google and a few other tools I’m looking at various keywords – what people are searching for, what the competition is like, and how we can be different.

At the bottom of each page I’m specifying the keywords I think should be relevant to this page. That’s partly for my own sanity – to make sure each important one is covered off, and mostly to keep me focused. If I want to get found for bespoke kitchens surrey then I need to use those words – and there were places on relevant pages that I hadn’t.

So yes, writing for the web is slightly different to writing for print. But surely it’s just about a bit of discipline in giving the readers what they want? And let’s be honest, we could all use a bit of that!

Writing powerful copy is always underestimated. Why? Because we all feel that because we can write, we can write copy that sells. That’s simply not the case. All too often company websites are littered with “we”, “us” “our” more than they feature “you” “your” “you’re”. I’m on a mission to change that and bring you in more business!

Join me for a Copywriting Workshop on Thursday 11th Feb at the Talbot Inn, Ripley and I’ll show you how to write more powerfully for your business.

1. It’s
   boring: your leaflets or website
   might be repetitive, full of jargon or just plain dull. Whatever the root
   cause, the reader just switches off and you lose out. Write with passion,
   style and energy!
2. Because
   it doesn’t ask for a response. If you
   write to let your customers know about something: a new product or service
   you’re offering, then the chances are they’ll take on board what you’ve
   told them. And take no action. Why? Because you haven’t asked them to do
   anything! Send people a letter to tell them you’re now offering
   ‘threading’ and you’ll get very little response. Send them a letter asking
   them to book a threading appointment before the end of the month to get
   something free/ half price and you’ll see your response rate skyrocket.
   Why? Because you’ve been clear about what you want.
3. It’s
   too short. I’m not advocating reams
   and reams of text, but the bottom line is that there are certain steps you
   need to walk your reader through if you want to sell to them. You wouldn’t
   sell someone a diamond necklace just by waving it under someone’s nose
   without saying anything would you? Use AIDCA to mirror the face to face
   sales process and get a better response.
4. Because
   it goes in the bin before you’ve had a chance to sell. Whether you’re writing for your website or a
   leaflet, your headline is absolutely key. You need to grab attention,
   build rapport and make sure your reader reads on. All in one sentence.
   Easy!
5. It’s
   self-centred. Your customers don’t
   want to know about how brilliant you are: they’re busy people. They’ll
   switch off and do nothing if you don’t grab ‘em by the balls. Your
   customers want to know how your brilliant product or service will solve a
   problem they have. Think solutions to problems!
6. It
   fails to build trust. So often the
   reader is left thinking: it’s a nice idea but how can I be sure I’m not
   making a mistake? Reassure people with testimonials and money back
   guarantees.
7. It
   leaves people thinking: ‘so what?’.
   Powerful copy leaves people wanting your product or service. Sometimes
   you’ll do that with a fabulous discount, other times with a compelling
   reason to buy, like the fact that writing powerfully will bring you in
   thousands of pounds more in revenue. Or perhaps the reverse psychology,
   that not writing your sales copy properly is losing you thousands of
   pounds in revenue! Whatever technique you use, be sure to really make
   people want your product or service.

Writing powerful copy isn’t a dark art. It’s something every
business owner can achieve: especially if you attend my Copywriting Essentials
workshop! Book your absolutely risk free place today at http://www.marvellousworkshops.co.uk/copywriting.html 

My promise to you: Attend the
workshop and you don’t feel that it has added any value to your business then I
will refund your money. No quibble. Book your place online today. I look forward to seeing you
there!