Cindy King's International Business Blog » web copywriting

What Is Copywriting?

Cindy King — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:00:41 +0000

Copywriting is any type of writing that offers products or services for sale.

Writing For A Call To Action

Copywriting skills are needed whenever you have a call to action, even if this is not a sale. Calls to action can be:

Press this button… for any reason
Sign up here… for anything
Give me your support
Call me
Read more
Come see me
Ask for a free trial, report or anything else
Buy my product

As you can see, a call to action can take many different forms. Most of these calls to action are part of a lead generation or sales strategy.

Writing For Sales

Beginners are often confused about what is involved in copywriting. This is because there are different types of writing for sales:

Feature article copy – editorial writing, a little more formal, but also uses conversational writing style.
Big ad agency copy – short and clever copy, used to build awareness and does not have a sales order device. Success performance is not tracked and you cannot measure exact response to see how well the ad worked.
Direct response copy – asks for an immediate action with a strong call to action. Success of this copy can be tracked and measured. Direct response copywiritng is personal.

Good Web Copywriting

Writing for the web is closer to direct response copywriting than any other writing style. Whether it is for profit or not.

To understand this, you need to understand how people use the internet. Their behavior online is linked to the action of search.

Your website needs to keep your readers:

Attention, to get them to stop and stay on your website.
Interest, to get them to read and look at your website.
Desire, to spend more time on your website, and even to come back again
and calls them to Action, to read more, to visit more of your web pages and to click through your links.

This formula, AIDA, is the first basic formula copywriters learn to write sales letters.

There are a few differences between Direct Response Copywriting and Web Copywriting. But the principles of good Direct Response Copywriting correspond to good Web Copywriting by over 90%.

When you think about it, there is no coincidence that you can use the same copywriting principles.

You can track and measure results for both Direct Response Copywriting and Web Copywriting.

When people refer to Web Copywriting this usually also involves SEO Copywriting. More on the differences between these two in a later article.

It Is All About Conversation

Conversational style writing skills are what makes great copywriters. Conversational skills that connect with target markets. And these are the two reasons why conversational writing style works:

Empathy – You talk to your reader as a friend. You show that you understand your reader. This is empathy.

Not Selling – You provide solutions. In a conversational writing style you do not sell, you provide solutions to your readers problems.

Conversational copy is quick and easy to read. It hits the emotional buttons that will get your readers to respond to your call to action.

This is why conversational copywriting is a proven sales technique.

Layers Of Marketing

In fact, a copywriter relies on marketing skills just as much as writing skills.

Let’s look at a typical copywriting project.

Professional copywriters usually spend their time as follows:

40% – detailed market research
20% – writing
40% – editing copy for sales objectives

As you can see, marketing research is a vital part of good copywriting. This happens before the actual writing.

Marketing guidelines also come into play. These guidelines look at the whole communication experience for the reader and also include:

How the reader responds within a specific market
Where your reader is when he finds your copy
How the copy works with your reader’s specific environment
How the copy works with the graphics

And the copywriter also refers to these guidelines when editing his copy.

And… Intimate Knowledge Of Your Readers

When you fully understand your reader, you are able to call him to action.

You use the same vocabulary and buzz words as your reader.
You know how to talk to your reader to get him to listen to you.
You know exactly what his deepest fears, motivations and desires are.
You understand how he will respond to what you say.
You know how to respond to his objections.
You know which emotional buttons to push to get your reader to respond immediately.

With a little tracking to measure results, copywriting skills are a valuable sales tool. In fact, all successful marketers online have invested in good copywriting skills. Either by taking the time to learn copywriting themselves, or by outsourcing. And usually a mixture of both.

My Own Case Study – Small Business Flexibility

Cindy King — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:00:12 +0000

International Web Marketing

As a very small business owner, I do have more flexibility in certain business strategies than many bigger businesses.

Content Creates An Online Communication Base

It has now been 7 months since I started my business directory.

Writing and publishing an article each work day for 6 months
Creating a business system
Recently color-coding on the website to make this system obvious to the readers

Of course, with over 200 articles there is now an obvious editorial direction for the website.

But I have always wanted an online communication base for my own business. Sure, I spent some time looking into the great Internet Marketing “Get Rich Quick” processes out there. It is a good way to pick up a lot of knowledge on web marketing practices.

This is what lead me into copywriting 3 years ago. But I chose to study copywriting because I already had good sales skills, and sales writing skills. Of course, you need good copywriting to make money on the web, whether you are in a typical get rich quick internet business or a brick and mortar business using the web as a tool. But recognizing good copywriting is already more than half the work done.

My situation was a little different. I already have valuable skills. I knew I wanted to use the internet primarily as a communication base for my own business services. My websites are there to communicate my international business development system.

All well and good. But how do you go about communicating your business system online to reach the right people, and to bring in the right clients?

Structure For Your Business

I found I needed matter to work with. Content. Lots of content. This took me 6 months of writing one article a day.

As a small business owner I had the flexibility to jump in and develop the structure on an on-going basis.

My primary focus was to write on and around my main business subject area. My articles are not primarily determined by niche keywords and research. Of course I tried to use appropriate keywords, and ran keyword searches from time to time. These searches often proved to me that I knew my subject matter well. My main focus was writing on my own clearly defined subject.

On a side note, my experience has shown this content strategy to give fantastic SEO results. I have come up on the first page of many different search results from month 3 onwards. Businesses from all over the world find me.

People pay money for SEO? Why don’t they sharpen their business perspective and knuckle down to work on exploiting what is basically a communication platform?

Now that the content structure is there, the content is extremely easy to create. This business directory has become very easy for me to feed.

Using the flexibility I had in the beginning probably gave me a better structure 6 months later than if I had planned everything offline first.

So, I now have time for the next business phase and it is now in progress. This is the phase which links my business directory to my business.

What does that mean?

A Real Specific Business Offer And Not The Get Rich Quick Web Marketing

First of all I have a several new URL’s, or domain names, for very specific landing pages. Now these landing pages are not the get rich quick type. These are simply landing pages targeting each of the specific products and services I offer.

These products and services form a lead generation strategy. This means:

There are some landing pages for free products, some for paid products and services.
There are also some landing pages for the same product, but written for different audiences.

This leads to a fair number of new websites, even if they are mainly mini-websites.

Ready Fire Aim

My immediate task is to set up 20 odd landing pages. This takes time. I am doing just about everything single handed:

Lead generation strategy
Web marketing strategy
Copywriting
International SEO

Yes, it is a fair task, even just for mini-sites.

But as a small business owner I do have some flexibility. Also as a small business owner I value batch processing.

So one of the first things I have done is to put all of the URL’s live. I simply put all of the websites up with an article or two from my main business directory.

As a small business owner, I feel I can do this.

It is essentially a Ready Fire Aim approach.

Having all of the websites up early, means that Mr. Google will find them soon. I will appreciate this when I actually get the website ready and want to promote it. Tomorrow I start writing a new landing page website one after the other.

Online Flexibility Brings Success

One of the basics of international web marketing is testing and adjusting your communication. Your communication needs to be live before you get any real market feedback.

Market feedback often shows you how to improve your message. The better your online communication is, the more sales you can expect.

Market feedback will also show you where your business potential lies.

So there will be lots of adjustments to the landing pages. That is my second business phase.

A Writer’s Guide To Powerful Paragraphs

Cindy King — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:00:56 +0000

Book & Product Reviews

Yes. I am working through the summer. Although working from home does have its advantages.

Regular reading breaks in the sun…every afternoon.

So this is the start of a new series of book reviews for as long as the sunny weather lasts.

My criteria for choosing what to read is based on:

Quick afternoon reads – short and easy to read
Useful for creating an international web business

Here is the first book I read. And it is a gem.

A Writer’s Guide To Powerful Paragraphs by Victor C. Pellegrino

This book surprised me. So much in fact that I have been trying to remember who recommended it to me.

You see, this book is one of three books by Victor Pellegrino. I bought them as used books on Amazon, so they came in at different times. The first one to arrive was:

A Writer’s Guide To Using 8 Methods Of Transition

This is a slim book. Easy to follow examples. I couldn’t wait to read the other two books.
The book, A Writer’s Guide To Powerful Paragraphs, came in yesterday. And yes, it is about writing paragraphs.

Light bulbs started going off in my brain as I read this. This is why I wish I could remember who recommended it – he knew about the light bulbs.

What I loved most about this book, is it is great to use as a guideline for writing web pages.

Yes, web pages.

Why? Well…

Web pages need to stay focused on one subject. So do paragraphs.
Web pages need to be written for one specific audience. So do paragraphs.
Web pages need to be written in a logical order. So do paragraphs.

And this book makes it all very easy. Victor Pellegrino teaches you with examples. He is a good writer. So learning is fast.

This is a fantastic primer for web copywriting. It is not the only book you should read on web copywriting. But it does teach you how to stay focused on one subject. You can easily pick one of the 30 different paragraphs and adapt it to one web page.

Just like in web copywriting, this book remains totally focused on your audience. You learn how to speak to your reader’s needs at that particular moment…in a particular paragraph. This is vital in web copywriting.

After a brief outline on how to write paragraphs, the main substance of the book is on 30 different types of paragraphs.

Yes, these are normal length paragraphs. Standard web writing uses shorter “paragraphs”. The 30 different examples show you how to structure one paragraph for one subject based on the reason for writing your paragraph.

Victor Pellegrino writes well. This book is very easy to understand. Perfect for a quick read. It has inspired me to do a series of 30 different paragraphs as short blog posts.

Oh, and the third book in the series…? It came in the mail today.

A Writer’s Guide To Transitional Words And Expressions

This is another gem I will keep next to me. It is a very slim book. It is a mini-thesaurus on transitional words. I have been battling with the word “but” for a few weeks. Its just seems to crop up too often. Hopefully this little book will help me get out of this habit quickly.

The book only took me a couple of hours to read. I enjoyed it and found it inspiring.
Watch out for some short blog “paragraph” articles soon…about 30 of them.

Communication For International Sales

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with communication for international sales:

A Writer’s Guide To Powerful Paragraphs By Victor C. Pellegrino
Content Rich By Jon Wuebben
Get Content Get Customers by Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett
Letting Go Of The Words – Writing Web Content That Works By Janice Redish
Stories That Sell By Casey Hibbard
The Culturally Customized Web Site By Nitish Singh And Arun Pereira
The Magic Of Pre-Writing By Steven Osborne
The Secret To Writing A Successful And Outstanding Blog By Liz Strauss

International Sales

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with international sales:

All of the Little Sales Books by Jeffrey Gitomer
Asinine Advertising By Herschell Gordon Lewis
Influencer: The Power To Change Anything by Kerry Patterson – Joseph Grenny – David Maxfield – Ron McMillian & Al Switzler
Sales Strategy From The Inside Out By Duane Sparks

International Web Marketing

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with international web marketing:

Bit Literacy Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload By Mark Hurst
Dotcomology The Science Of Making Money Online By Stone Evans
How The Internet Works By Preston Gralla
How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders By Catherine Seda
Landing Page Optimization By Tim Ash
Mastering Online Marketing By Mitch Meyerson
Multichannel Marketing By Akin Arikan
Online Competitive Intelligence By Helen P. Burwell
ProBlogger by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett
Stats Faceslap By Ed Rivis
The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy By Ed Rivis
Website Optimization by Andrew B. King

Here are some Product Reviews:

All of the book and product reviews here are totally unsolicited… spontaneous …and without affiliate links. These are books I have read recently and only the ones that I share with friends. So all of the reviews you find here are on books and products that I highly recommend.

Also, as these are books and products that I have recently read since, this is not a list of my all-time favorite books. Hopefully I will get around to reviewing my favorite culture and international business books sometime soon.

Use these skills in your international tactics on the…
Get International Clients International Sales Road Map:

• With trust and empathy

• With strong cross-cultural communication

International Business Success Basics

• Do you feel at a loss with regards to dealing with international business?

This guide gives you the background information you need right from the start.

Cindy King's International Business Blog » web copywriting

What Is Copywriting?

Writing For A Call To Action

Writing For Sales

Good Web Copywriting

It Is All About Conversation

Layers Of Marketing

And… Intimate Knowledge Of Your Readers

More on International Copywriting:

More in the Get International Clients Business Guides

My Own Case Study – Small Business Flexibility

Content Creates An Online Communication Base

Structure For Your Business

A Real Specific Business Offer And Not The Get Rich Quick Web Marketing

Ready Fire Aim

Online Flexibility Brings Success

More On International Web Marketing

A Writer’s Guide To Powerful Paragraphs

Communication For International Sales

International Sales

International Web Marketing

Guide To Multichannel Marketing

Guide To International Web Marketing

Step 5 – Connect With Your International Markets

International Business Success Basics