“Excessive Adjectives – too Much of a Good Thing.”
Blame Your English Teacher
Blame Your Mom
Blame Fear of breaking the law
You aren’t addressing your prospects’ concerns”

Now that you know where to place the blame, you can start to do something about it.

That starts with taking the time to write. No good copy is written in an instant.

Begin with getting it all out on paper, then sort, re-arrange, and delete anything that doesn’t add to your main topic.

Next, tighten it up. That means getting rid of “fluff” and extra words that serve no purpose except to fill space. Replace long words with short ones and long sentences with short ones.

Eliminate any words that any person in your target audience might not understand. Even if you use terms like “experiential,” “protracted,” and “tertiary” in real life – get them out of your copy.

And if you can’t overcome the reasons why or don’t have the time to write effective marketing copy, get in touch.

Writing to help you succeed is what I do.

And yet, amateur marketers still pay too much attention to the rules their High School English teacher taught. The result is dry as a bone, stiff copy.

And you know, nobody reads dry words until they’re required to do so.

At the same time, being too casual makes you sound a little demented. And I HAVE seen it done. In fact, I’ve received emails with a subject line that went something like: “Like You Gotta Dig This!”

Uh – no, I like don’t gotta.

I thought that “like” habit had fallen out of fashion years ago – but I was wrong. I not only heard it in the grocery store this week, I heard it on a television commercial tonight.

But there are a couple of other common errors that I’m seeing more and more lately.

One is the over-use or mis-use of commas.

Look how difficult it is to read this:

By now, you know, that following instructions, from your high school English teacher, will cause you to write dry, dull, uninspiring copy.

This one is SO easy to avoid. Here’s the trick:

After you write a sentence or a paragraph, read it out loud. Pause at every comma. If it sounds like normal conversation – great. If it sounds choppy or clunky or halting (as if you were really not sure about what you wanted to say) get rid of a few commas.

The other is the over-use of descriptive words and phrases.

Take this sentence from a property description one of my ezine readers found on an agent website: “Well-favored uncommonly modern kitchen equipped with top-of-the line appliances and unpredicted materials.”
(No, that’s not a typo. It said “unpredicted.”)

Sadly, all those words draw attention to themselves and away from the message they were meant to convey.

Keep it simple – and communicate.

First, show them how the law of supply and demand dictates that rents will continue to rise. In some communities it is already cheaper to pay a mortgage payment than a rent payment. If foreclosures continue, so this trend should also continue.

Get the numbers for your own community and show them the comparisons.
Then talk about the fact that mortgage payments build equity for you while rent payments build equity for the landlord.

But here’s what’s really important:

As long as you don’t plan to move, it doesn’t matter if your home increases or decreases in value over the next couple of years. If you want pride of ownership, love the home, and can comfortably afford the payment, that’s what matters.

Next, when you own your home you don’t have to answer to a landlord. You can paint the walls, change the light fixtures, and drive nails to hang pictures. You can even move a wall if you really want to.

On top of that, when you own your home and have a fixed rate mortgage you don’t have to worry about the monthly cost going up or being evicted because your landlord failed to make payments (or wants his kids to move in, or sells to someone who wants to live there themselves.)

Of course there are tax advantages. I found a website that shows how much tax you pay after deductions – and it can be eye opening.

For instance, for the year 2011, a married couple filing jointly will pay $22,372 on an after deductions income of $100,000. Pretend for a minute that they have $16,000 in deductible interest and no other itemized deductions. After eliminating the standard deduction of $11,400, they’d still have an additional $4,600 in deductions for income tax purposes. Their tax bill would drop to $16,100. That savings of $6,272 comes to $522 per month that could go toward a house payment, savings, vacations, or whatever else they liked.

And of course, if they have other itemized deductions, such as employee business expense or medical bills that would normally be swallowed into the standard deduction, their savings will be even higher. And this doesn’t consider state taxes – if you have those, they might save there as well.

Check out that website I found, and use it to show your fence sitting buyers how much they’ll save.

http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm

Your business card should do two things:

• Reveal both your name and your face – so that people who don’t remember your name can connect your friendly and helpful attitude with your face.
• Reveal what you do. If you sell real estate, say where or specify your niche. If you’re an engineer, tell what kind of engineer. If you’re a writer, let them know what kind. For example: Novels, poetry, news, or marketing copy.

Once you have that informative card – give it away to as many people as you can. Here are some ideas:

Start with people you meet in social situations. You don’t have to be pushy about it, just hand them a card and say something friendly and non-threatening. For instance, “Get in touch any time you want to know what’s going on in our market.”

Do the same for people you chat with when you’re shopping or doing errands. For instance, the grocery store checker, the bank teller, and the pharmacist.

And then…

When you pay a local bill by mail, put a card in the envelope.

When you leave a nice tip – leave your card with it.

When you volunteer to help with a project and will need to be in touch with other volunteers, give each of them your card. You don’t even have to mention your business, it’s just the easiest way to give them all the contact information they need.

When you meet with your child’s teacher, give him or her your card. Again – it’s a good way to provide your contact information.

Give your card to the providers you pay – like your doctor, dentist, hairdresser, mechanic, dog groomer, and veterinarian. And remember the people who mow the lawn, clean the house, service the pool, and wash the windows.

Every one of those people is a potential source of business, and you should never assume that they know what you do for a living.

That means instead of writing “large kitchen” you should write “12 X 14′ kitchen offers space for friends and family to help with holiday meals.”

And instead of saying “surrounded by trees” you should write “tall Pines surround the property, assuring privacy.”

I know – some places on the web you don’t have room so you have to be boring and uninspiring. But some places – like your own website – offer all the space you need. So use it!

The rule is: Remember that it isn’t about you.

Your marketing, if it’s to be effective, HAS to be about your prospective customers/clients and what they want or need.

Test each of your marketing messages (including web pages) by checking to see what the first sentence is about. If it says “we” or “I,” rewrite it.

Then count the number of times you say “we” or “I” or any variation thereof. Next, count how many times you use some version of the word “You.”

Unless you’ve used “you” at least 3 or 4 times as often as you’ve used “I,” – rewrite it.

Just yesterday I spent nearly an hour on the phone with a client who was trying to decide on the best word to describe an offer he was making.

It can be a long process, pondering each word and trying to decide how it might affect a reader’s perception of the offer.

Most copywriters and marketers go through this same process… and sometimes they come up with words that are just plain annoying.

At least, they annoy me. Once I see them in copy I am stuck with the feeling that the person is “All hype and no substance.”

The problem, of course, is that the words that annoy me might not be the same ones that annoy you.

But for what it’s worth, I’ll share two of the words/phrases that turn me away…

Both of these are used by marketers who are promoting their expertise and asking you to buy their program or listen to an audio or video – which you know will only promote what they have to sell.

One is “drill down.” They say “We’re going to drill down and …”

The other is “grill.” Just yesterday I got a promotion for a teleseminar, “In which XX will grill me until he discovers my secret for…”

Yeah sure. Delete.

Before you send your promotion out to the world, check to see if any of the words you use make you sound like “All hype and no substance.”

If they do, choose better words.

If everyone who might possibly use your services or buy your merchandise was aware of you and what you have to offer, your revenues would increase. But, a whole lot of people who might love you don’t even know you exist.

Unfortunately, “same old, same old” ads in the local news won’t get their attention. But if you do something unusual, you’ll turn into news, and becoming news will give your exposure a giant boost.

What does that have to do with Halloween?

One thing you can do that will get you noticed AND create goodwill in the community is hold a pumpkin give-away.

We did that one year when I had a real estate agency, and we got both a story and a photo in the local news – two weeks in a row. On top of that, we attracted the favorable attention of dozens of people who had only been marginally aware that we existed.

I forget the monetary cost, but it was far less than the price of two newspaper stories!

We contracted with a pumpkin grower to deliver two bins of small pumpkins – you know, the big cardboard bins that sit in the grocery store filled with pumpkins, melons, or corn.

Then we offered one free pumpkin per child. All they had to do was come to our office to get them – accompanied by a parent.

Another time I purchased a few hundred American Flags on sticks (that held our business cards) and we handed them out in the parking lot at the post office a couple of days before the 4th of July. That was a LOT of fun.

Both of those events got people talking about us and our agency for days.

Why talk about Halloween right now? Because if you want to try it, you need to get those pumpkins ordered!

It’s finished now, and you can read all about it at www.promotemyrealestatecareer.com.

In it, you’ll find 107 ways to promote your career, and all but about a dozen of those ways are either completely free or cost only the gasoline to get you out and about.

If you have a different kind of business, I also have an e-book for you. In it you’ll find a plan to keep people coming back to your physical store, or to keep ordering your party plan merchandise or “door-to-door” products such as Avon.

Read more about How to Market a Local Business.

The truth is, you can do a great deal to help yourself by spending your time and using your imagination.

Yes, you need a good website, and yes, your website needs good copy. You also need business cards. But beyond that, a whole lot of what you could get talked into will be a waste of dollars.

The catch is, you do have to spend the time.

Just as there’s no magic pill to give you good health, there’s no magic pill to make your business take off.

This week I’ve gotten multiple emails from two different marketers. I should take the time to unsubscribe from both of them. I’m not really sure how I got on their lists in the first place, but I expect they bought a list.

However, I’m fascinated by the way they’re shooting themselves in the foot… guess I’ll watch a little longer.

What I won’t do is respond to their offers.

The first one is from a man who has been sending me a variety of offers for quite some time. I think he’s trying to find the “Magic Bullet” that will lead to Internet success.

His most recent emails have cited the experts’ advice that it takes 5 “touches” to get a new prospect to take action. (This is generally believed to be true.) Then he tells me how many times he’s written to me without a response! According to his latest message, it’s 11 times.

He may have a good product to sell, but my plate is full with writing for clients and adding real estate letter sets to the collection I sell on line.

It wouldn’t matter how good his offer sounded, I’m not going to branch out into something new just now. My time would simply be spread too thin to do anything justice.

Meanwhile, he’s trying to “guilt” me into trying his scheme. Sorry, guilt doesn’t motivate me at all.

But those messages are mild compared to one that I’ve gotten twice in the last two days.

It reads:

What the hell’s the matter with you?

Are you happy being broke?

If he seriously thinks I’m going to read the rest of that message, he’s seriously crazy.