Thoughts on Marketing…

When we write, we know what we mean to say. But sometimes the way we arrange the words makes it difficult for a reader to know what we mean. For example: Yesterday I got a Google alert that one of my articles had been picked up for someone’s blog. This time the article and my [...]

Pick up a newspaper, read an e-mail, or browse web pages, and you’ll see dozens of marketers breaking the #1 rule, and wondering why success continues to elude them. What is that #1 rule? “It’s not about you.” Many marketers think that their message should be about themselves and all the wonderful products they sell [...]

Your marketing copy represents you to hundreds or even thousands of people who will form their opinion of you and the value of your service – without ever meeting you in person. That copy is the first impression, and it could be the only one. Its quality will dictate whether those people begin to build [...]

I know – you need a whole lot more than one customer. And you can’t write a separate letter to every single one of them when you don’t know who is going to read your ads or visit your website. So what am I talking about? I’m talking about the fact that just one person [...]

Do you write your own advertising copy? Many do, for reasons ranging from budget constraints to not having experienced the value that professionally written ad copy can bring to their business. And that’s fine. You can learn how to do an acceptable job if you spend some time studying the psychology of advertising, read ezines [...]

Every writer has pet peeves that make him or her cringe. I actually have two. The first one is “I want to thank…” It must be just me, because I see it and hear it all the time, but my instant reaction is always “Well, then why don’t you do it if you want to?” [...]

Whether you’re writing a postal letter, adding copy to your web site, sending an email, or placing an ad in your local newspaper, it’s important that your customers don’t have to think when they read your message. OK – I hear you telling me that of course they have to think. And they do. They [...]

Last night my son came to dinner, and he brought along a little “throw away”  newspaper/magazine. You know the kind you get to browse through while you’re waiting for your lunch at a diner. It had a few good articles and he always chuckles over the personals page, but this time it had a guest [...]

Just in case you don’t read the comments when you read the posts… John Forde just left a comment on the last post and I want to share his invitation to you. John writes the Copywriter’s Roundtable – a weekly message that not only offers copywriting advice, but advice for marketers in general. Not only [...]

Bob Bly’s letter this morning offered up some interesting tidbits that he’d found, and since he gives permission to re-use his letters, here are a couple of them: ***The ideal length for a web page*** According to web expert Gerry McGovern, the ideal length for a page of web copy on a regular web site [...]