Posts Tagged ‘copy’

I had a great marketing consultation with a client last week who really got me thinking. Just how ‘accessible’ is AIDCA? To me, it’s second nature. Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction, Action. And yet to Julian, it was only when I explained the concept in plain English that the lightbulb really came on. And so I now share my ‘Plain English’ AIDCA formula with you.

(Just in case you’re wondering what on earth AIDCA is, in brief it’s a fantastic tool to help you make your marketing more effective – a process, a structure, which mirrors the way that people buy. For the full story read my detailed AIDCA breakdown.)

Although I always encourage my clients to write from the point of view of their customer, it often helps to just draft something from your perspective to start with, just in note form, to get your head around it. So the process I’m about to share with you won’t be the finished article. You’ll need to do a LOT more tweaking, refining and most importantly, writing from the perspective of your customer rather than your own business. But just to enable you to get your head around AIDCA, here’s my plain English version of what it actually means to you as a business:

Attention: We sell widgets that will help your business
Interest: Here are the benefits of this widget to your business
Desire: This is why I know you can’t live without this widget
Conviction: If you’re worried you’d be making a mistake, don’t be – here’s some reassurance (in the form of testimonials or a guarantee)
Action: Here’s what I want you to do

How about for your business? Can you see this working? Does this ‘plain English’ version make AIDCA any easier to understand or to apply?

If you’d like to understand how to put this, and other marketing techniques into practice then you will definitely find the Marvellous Monthly Marketing Workshops useful – you can find out more on our website at www.marvellousworkshops.co.uk

Tagged as , AIDA, AIDCA, copy, Copywriting, literature, marketing, writing in AIDCA, Copywriting, Workshops

Can I share one of the most effective free marketing tools that every business has at their disposal? Testimonials. Happy clients are your best asset. Happy clients will sell for you harder than your best salesperson. They’re genuine, impartial, and most importantly, they’ll sell the benefits of your product or service from a client’s perspective.

You can use testimonials everywhere – on your website, your blog, your corporate brochures and your leaflets and postcards. They really do add a lot of value to the power of your marketing. Can I just make one suggestion?

Please, never, ever make them up. They’ll undermine your credibility. And with lots of happy customers, why would you need to!

Tagged as , agency, copy, Copywriting, design, farnham, godalming, guildford, marketing, strategy, surrey, testimonials, web, Websites, woking in Blogging, Copywriting, Web Design, Websites, Workshops

When people visit your website what do they see? A jumble of text? Lots and lots of information about your business? Or is there a compelling statement which reaffirms to your visitors why they’ve visited your site and how you can help them?

Your website homepage is like the shop window to your online presence. If you can make your homepage attractive to your visitors, you can stop them bolting the site the minute they’ve arrived. (This is your bounce rate – the number of visitors that leave your site without looking past your homepage). So just how do you make your site compelling enough that people want to trawl around it.

For starters, is there a statement telling people how you can help them? In their language? That doesn’t start with the word ‘we’? Think about what it is that you really offer, that really benefits your target audience. On my homepage we’ve grabbed attention with the line “Fresh thinking to help you communicate the image your business deserves. Design, print, marketing, websites”. Can you see how that might be more powerful than “We can help you with your business image”? Same proposition, different way of writing.

Secondly make it easy for people to see the benefits of using you. You’ll see on our homepage that we have a column on the right that breaks down some of our services into Benefits. “We can help you to”.

Thirdly include a fabulous testimonial. We have one which completely sums up not just what I want to tell people, but what makes us unique – and all from the words of a client.

Finally, make sure the design is attractive and fits with your brand values. How many times have you visited a site and just thought “Yuk. Not for me”. Design is key if you want to engage your audience and encourage them to look further than your homepage.

Tagged as , agency, copy, design, farnham, godalming, guildford, strategy, surrey, web, Websites, woking in Websites

I’ve just spent the last couple of months rewriting and redesigning my new website. I’ve got to be honest, I’m pretty chuffed with it, but boy has it been hard work. It’s been a real exercise in restraint (and those that know me will understand that’s pretty hard for me to deal with!). The reason [...]

Tagged as , copy, Copywriting, website in Websites

Does your website talk about your business or your clients? Does it talk about what you’d like to sell them or how you can help them? I know it sounds like a subtle difference, but it’s an important one. Take a a piece of paper and divide it into two columns. On the left hand [...]

Tagged as , copy, Copywriting, web, Websites in Websites