No, I’m not questioning your ability to write. I’m suggesting that it may not make sense for you to handle your own writing projects. Why? Several reasons:
WANT TO BE LOUD AND CLEAR? WRITE FOR THE EAR
People accustomed to writing for the eye often don’t realize that writing for the ear demands an entirely different approach.
THAT NOT-SO-FRESH FEELING
I entered the advertising industry at about the same time that women began to play a much bigger role in the field. It was long enough ago that the only way for a woman to break in was behind a typewriter (yes, we still used those) as a secretary (yes, we still called them that). I don’t ever remember men being asked about their typing speed during job interviews.
As in so many other fields, the old boys were terrified about the effect these chicks and broads would have on their profession, but looking back, I think that women may have been the best thing to happen to advertising.
JOE SWITCHED THE BREAD
One of the most inane commercials I’ve ever seen dates back to my much younger days and a product called Beefsteak rye bread. I’d guess that it was somewhere in the early 70s, and while that time may have been considered creativity’s golden years, this one was as leaden as they get.
The scene was a construction site full of stereotypically macho men (this was pre-Village People). A grizzled journeyman is doing something to his young new co-worker’s lunch, and two other workers chuckle, “Look – Joe’s switched the bread on him.”
ARE YOU TELLING THEM WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW?
Are you wasting precious time in ads, direct mail, and brochures telling prospects what they already know?
Instead, tell them what matters. Talk about benefits, not features. Don’t say your product uses a three-handled veeblefetzer unless you can explain what that will do for them. “The three-handled veeblefetzer lets you core twice as many radishes in the same time.”
SUCCESS STARTS WITH SCHEDULES
I’ve been working with companies for nearly three decades. I’ve seen a lot of marketing programs succeed, and I’ve seen a lot crash and burn. Many different factors play roles in that success or failure, but you might be surprised at the one element that always seems to be part of successful efforts.
It’s organization. Something as simple as a rigid schedule often spells the difference between success and failure. Whether it’s trying to sustain a monthly newsletter, produce an annual report, or stretch a marketing budget across a full year, the discipline of some sort of schedule is critical.
PLAIN ENGLISH BOOSTS TAX REVENUES
Not that long ago, I heard about a very impressive effort by officials in Washington State. At a time when tax revenues are hard to come by, those officials boosted use-tax revenues by a whopping $800,000!
Did they raise rates? No. Hire private investigators? Uh-uh. Try torture? Nope.
THE DEATH OF APPRENTICESHIP
A wise boss once lamented what he called the death of apprenticeship. As organizations downsized, the paths to management were compressed, and people found themselves making decisions that they would have previously waited a decade or two to make.
Where a generation before, a marketing decision-maker would approach those decisions having spent many years working under other decision-makers and learning from them, today, it’s not at all unusual for people fresh out of college to find themselves in control of what companies do. Of course, most leave school with more focused education than in days past, but there’s still a lot to be said for experience.
YOUR SILENT SALESMAN
What is a brochure? An ad? A radio commercial? A website? You get 5 points if you said they’re all marketing communications channels. But they’re also something more.
You can’t be everywhere, and that includes everywhere your prospective customers are. So you develop materials such as ads and brochures to stand in for you. In essence, they’re actually salespeople for your organization, conveying messages when you can’t be there to do it.
THE ROYAL WE AND YOUR BUSINESS
Way back when I started my business (in the days when the Internet was powered by squirrels in exercise wheels and nearly all websites were blue), I spent a lot of time in online forums and other sites that catered to the small-business crowd. Like the rest of the denizens, I was looking for sound advice. Frankly, I found little.
But I still remember that one conundrum really seemed to vex visitors to those sites. “When writing about my business, should I use ‘I’ or ‘we’?” Oh, there were impassioned arguments about this topic, and I see the same arguments today on sites that cater to budding entrepreneurs. So what is the answer?