Look at a copywriter as an image consultant for the most potent and powerful communication tool you can ever use with your market: The written word you use to communicate with your market.
I know some people are arguing about this, but what they don't realise that this argument is costing them serious amounts of money. Just consider this: The headline alone on your website, letters or brochures can increase or reduce response rate by as much as 2,100%. This is 22 times improvement?
Or...
Look at a copywriter as a salesperson who can visit thousands of prospects at the click of the mouse. As a famous copywriter, John E. Kennedy coined it in the early 20th century, copywriting is salesmanship in print.
Why do businesses use copywriters? Because they don't want to incur the financial, mental and emotional burden of managing huge sales forces and engage them in cold-prospecting grunt work. It's that simple. One good copywriter can outsell a 100-person sales force anytime of the day. How? Let's hear it from the late Peter Drucker...
"There will always, one can assume, be need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product and service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available; i.e., logistics rather than salesmanship, and statistical distribution rather than promotion." (Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices - 1974)
Here is one example. A few months ago I finished an engagement with a software development company that was about to hire some new salespeople to sell more.
Before being hired, I just asked the executives to hear me out and decide afterwards. What they didn't realise was how much it was costing them to run the sales force.
Now fast-forward 14 months...
There are only two engagement consultants. They guide prospects through the qualification process, and if they qualify, they come to the company's offices for a discussion. This is after filling in and returning several documents to the seller company. The closing rate is virtually 100% because prospects are very carefully selected and screened, to make sure tyre-kickers can't waste the consultants' time.
One point is that only prospects that fall into the company's Ideal Client profile are accepted as clients. The screening here is very objective and free of emotions.
And what is the marketing department? Well, it's really a big manual with lots of scripts and letters I've written. And the two consultants use these materials according to the company's marketing calendar.
Henry David Thoreau once said that if you build a better mousetrap, then people beat a path to your door. He was partly right and partly wrong. People don't beat a path to your door because you have a better mousetrap. No! Never done. Never will.
They beat a path to your door because you market your mousetrap better than the other mousetrap makers. It's the marketing that makes them come to you not the mousetrap itself. And the essence of that marketing is the words that come out of your company. It is copywriting, the keystone of your marketing process that can make selling superfluous.
And one more thing...
Don't market the product itself, like "want a better mousetrap?"
Market the obvious problem people experience without the value of your stuff, like, "Pissed off with sharing your home with dozens of mice?"
Marketing Sherpa is, one of the most reputable sources in B2B marketing, concludes its 2006 B2B lead generation study with this message...
"The best offers are high in perceived educational value. Content rules. In fact, if your marketing budget were to expand by say $60,000 this year, instead of investing in an ad campaign, a trade show booth, a DM mailing or more paid search clicks … hire another writer for your staff. Get someone who can kick out content - must-read white papers, keyword-heavy blog entries, compelling PowerPoint presentations, email newsletter articles, etc. Content is your best marketing investment for 2006 and beyond."
By hiring more salespeople you can grow linearly. If that, considering that the average annual turnover of sales folks is a massive 43% and some 50% of the average sales force never reaches quota.
Copywriting can quantum leap your sales altogether, while you're also reducing your cost of sales. That may be worth something, may it not? At least a long and deep thought.
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