Maine Creative Services – Page 2 – Affordable web design and SEO copywriting for small business

Dilbert: “Write like a cartoonist!”

OK, not Dilbert, but his creator, Scott Adams, has some savvy writing tips useful for you small-business owners trying to make your website more interesting and compelling.

While most of his advice had to do with humor writing and making people laugh, many of his suggestions are valid for copywriters and business writers, too. In fact, anyone who wants people to keep reading what they’ve written.

Here’s some of Dilbert’s daddy’s advice:

Start with an attention-getting “lead.” Here’s Adams’ opening gambit in his Wall Street Journal article: “Last weekend a French fry got lodged in my sinus cavity.” Does that make you want to read more?
Hook your readers with stories. You don’t have to be funny, like Adams’ tale (about his ignorance of the human reproductive system when he was 11 years old). But stories resonate with people, draw them in and make them feel closer to you. What if you told the story of why you started your business — who you wanted to help, and why? Show a little of your authentic self — I guarantee it will be a lot more exciting than your company mission statement.
Make them curious. “Good writing makes you curious without being too heavy-handed about it,” Adams writes. “My first sentence in this piece, about the French fry lodged in my sinus cavity, is designed to make you curious.”

Adams also explains why “yank” is funnier than “pull.” Now there’s something every writer ought to know!

10 Commandments of Website Design & Copywriting

I. Thou shalt not put style (design) over substance (copy). Design sets the mood and attracts the prospect’s eye. But good, persuasive copy is what sells.

II. Thou shalt honor thy customers worries and problems, for that is what keepeth them awake at night.

III. Thou shalt focus thy copy on the customer, not thyself. Show them how you can help them end their wailing and gnashing of teeth, and thou willst be an answer to their prayers.

IV. Thou shalt not glorify thyself by making empty promises thou cannot keep. Indeed, thou shall back up thy promises with proof: case studies, testimonials, etc., of how how thou hast helped others like them in the past. In other words, thou shall put up or shut up.

V. Thou shalt not bore thy visitors, who art afflicted with a short attention span. Thou shalt trim the fat.

VI. Thou shalt ask for thy visitors’ e-mail addresses and permission to follow up in the future. But thou shalt not browbeat them with over-aggressive or over-frequent missives.

VII. Thou shalt offer value in exchange for their e-mail addresses. This may taketh on many forms, including expert guidance within thy field of endeavor. (Stone tablets optional.)

VIII. Thou shalt optimize thy website for the great god Google, lest thy website be cast into the wilderness and ignored by those searching for thy goods and services. Ditto for the lesser deities, Bing and Yahoo. Yea verily, these are false gods, but hey, business is business.

IX. Thou shalt optimize the layout of thy copy to pleaseth the eye of thy reader. This meaneth headings and subheads, wide margins, white space and bullet lists. Banish thy clutter to the dark, unspeakable places.

X. Thou shalt not bully, browbeat, or hard-sell thy beloved customer. Rather, thou shalt partner with them, embrace their problems as thine own, and help them achieve their goals.

Is your website missing this crucial ingredient?

A customer sign-up form — or rather, the lack of one — is one of the most common mistakes of small business websites. Look around. You’ll see more than half of them don’t have one.

A sign-up form is the first step toward building your own in-house mailing list. Without one, you have no way of getting back in touch with people who were interested enough to visit your website in the first place.

It’s like owning a retail store, watching customers come and go, and having no way to get in touch with them in the future. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what happens in most stores. That’s another advantage a business website has over a costly bricks-and-mortar location.

Provide valuable content and they’ll want more

If your website content is strong and original, and optimized to attract search engines (SEO), you should see traffic arriving from Google, Yahoo, Bing and the others. If your visitors stick around long enough to visit a few pages of your content, or read a few blog posts, chances are they’re interested in whatever you’re selling. They’re probably not ready to buy, but they are interested.

So why let them leave without at least asking for their e-mail address?

Starting your own in-house mailing list is the beginning of what’s known as permission marketing or relationship marketing. The idea is to establish a relationship with prospective customers, and let them get to know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you. Then you ask for their e-mail address, and permission to contact them again in the future.

After all, it’s much easier to sell something to an existing customer than to a complete stranger. So get to know your customers, and let them get to know you.

May I call you again sometime?

A sign-up form is the quickest and easiest way to obtain their contact information. you can write the code yourself, but e-mail service providers like AWeber, Constant Contact and Mailchimp not only manage your mailing list, automatically adding new subscribers and removing old ones, but they even make it easy to create a sign-up form you can add to your website.

If you hate messing around with technical stuff and need help adding a sign-up form to your small-business website, contact me and I’ll be glad to help.

Then what?

The next challenge is making them want to join your mailing list. How do you accomplish that? We’ll cover that next time.

PS:

A few seats are still available for my E-mail Marketing for Small Businesses and Non-profits class beginning next Tuesday (Sept 28) in Sanford Maine. Click here for info and (if you’re in the area) to enroll.

Niche marketing: Ban screaming kids

Find a “crying” need and fill it: that’s the essence of niche marketing.

A North Carolina restaurant has done just that — literally. They’ve banned crying kids. Ditto whining, screaming or hysterical tykes. Check out the sign on the front door.

The restaurant owner — a woman, by the way — says she got sick of customers complaining about parents who can’t or won’t control their kids during meals, treat the restaurant like a playground, generally misbehave or act like a nuisance.

They’re not being jerks about it, apparently. If a kid starts screaming, an employee will ask the parent to quiet them down or take them outside.

Talk about differentiating yourself from the competition!

Has it cost them customers?

Sure, but the owner says it’s brought in more business than it’s driven away.

via the Consumerist

My E-mail Marketing Course starts Sept. 28

There are a few seats left in a class in Email Marketing for Small Businesses and Non-profits I’m teaching starting Sept. 28 at Sanford Adult Ed here in southern Maine.

This is one of those “old-fashioned” kinds of classes. You know — in-person, in a classroom, not online. So there will be plenty of time for questions and discussions.

I’ll cover why email is still an affordable, effective marketing tool for businesses and non-profits. You’ll develop a better understand of its benefits, and discover exactly where and how to begin.

Topics covered will include:

Setting up and growing your own in-house mailing list
Mail list service providers
Opt-in vs. double opt-in signups: which and why
How to eliminate spam problems
Ways to use email: e-newsletters, email blasts, special offers, courses, auto-responders
Writing emails that get response
Landing pages: what and why

Drop me a note if you have any questions. Enroll here. I’d love to see you there!

Why online marketing gets harder and harder

Because marketers’ credibility keeps going lower and lower.

Now a PR firm has agreed to settle charges it had its employees pretend to be unbiased videogame buyers and post gushing, rave reviews at Apple’s online iTunes store.

When I read that, I felt like the French police inspector who was “shocked, shocked!” to discover gambling at Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca.

The same thing is happening elsewhere, of course, including Amazon and other high-profile online merchants.

My suggestion: take all reviews with a degree of skepticism. Look for more than a handful of reviews, Be especially wary if all of them were all posted within a few days or weeks of each other. You want to see 50+ reviews, spaced over the course of many months.

Two habits that will help clean up deceptive online marketing:

To keep the practice of phony reviews from spreading, simply never do business with a company that would engage in such underhanded practices.
Ditto for spam: Never do business with a company that sends out unsolicited spam. Period.

Zero tolerance. If we all followed those two simple rules, both practices would simply fade away.

Agree? Disagree? Maybe you’ve got an even better idea? Let’s hear it.

When email became a breakthrough

I was chatting with a friend/client recently when the conversation drifted to the many amazing tech breakthroughs we’ve seen in the past few years. As amazing as iPhones, Twitter, and the like are, I still think one of the biggest boosts Internet use got was when the barriers between email services came down.

It’s hard to remember, but there was a time not so long ago, when AOL email users could only send and receive email from other AOL users. Ditto for Compuserve, ATTMail and the rest. Each was an isolated silo with no inter-connectivity.

Those of us trying to do business via email had to have separate paid accounts with each service. Yes, kids, you had to pay for email in those days. (Music, too.) Then depending on the speed of your modem (56K? Wow!) and dial-up connection, you spent 5-10 minutes several times a day, checking each separate account for new messages.

I remember how thrilled I was when some forgotten geek wrote a batch script that automated the process. It automatically logged in to each account, downloaded your new messages, sent the ones you’d written (offline, of course), logged off, then repeated the process for all the others. You could check all your email accounts while enjoying a cup of coffee.

All those different email addresses didn’t exactly encourage Luddite clients to embrace this revolutionary approach to communications, either. And let’s not even talk about the mess your business card and sig file became with so many entries.

It’s much better today. The only thing your business card or sig file really needs is your email address. Oh, your work and cell phone numbers, too. And the name of your company.

Wait, don’t forget URLs for your website(s), Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, Twitter handle…

Mailing address? Hmmm, there might be room if we skip your name…