Here is
your Ranseen Marketing Debunker Newsletter for November 2008
Short is Hard - Long is Easy
Winston Churchill once said, "I am going to give a long
speech as I have not had time to write a short one."
I tell
all of my marketing
clients: short is hard, and long is a lot easier. Have you discovered this truism when
you write yourself or hire someone to write for you -- whether it's a speech, a
marketing piece or whatever? What I typically run into at new clients is either a "blank
sheet" or worse: a lot of lengthy, wordy, disjointed, outdated marketing-like stuff
that doesn't grab anyone and or get them to act.
Great
copywriters don't get paid by the word. They get paid to boil it down, get your
audience's attention, and help you sell and get you results. The shorter the content, usually the more challenging: new company names/domains,
headlines,
taglines, one or two sentence USP's (Unique Selling Propositions), Google ads (25 characters per title plus 70
more characters plus your display domain - that's it!), a few paragraphs
for a sales letter & other concise versions of your pitch.
Creating
short, meaningful marketing messages takes both time and talent. Author Craig
Vetter once wrote," Blank paper is God's way of telling us that it's not so
easy to be God." Amen! It's the hardest thing I do in my marketing work, but I love it.
If
you're trying to hone your marketing communications online and offline, hire a
pro and expect to pay for the result -- and not for the volume of words that is
produced. Or if you try it yourself, leave plenty of time for thinking and
iterations. Don't try and nail it the first time or second time. If you've got
other "levels" of content to write, work on those while you're hatching your
top line marketing words. Then come back and revisit the tougher, shorter
messages. Run your words by others,
including potential customers (BTW, Google Adwords is a great
place to test your pitch). Wrestle with your marketing words...and
then go with them.
The
short version(s) will be well worth the extra time and effort.
P.S. I
also tell clients not to "marry" their marketing messages. If you've already put in a
lot of work, and your message isn't resonating (or you think of something even
better), change it, and keep changing it as often as needed. That's one
tremendous advantage of communicating
online versus expensive print brochures, etc.: being able to quickly, easily, and inexpensively modify anything
you want today!
Online
copy is very different than offline? Nope...it's one of Ranseen
Marketing's Top 10 Search Engine Marketing Myths, a brand new white paper from Ranseen Marketing.
A very Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours,
Tom
Ranseen
Ranseen
Marketing
