Sales & Marketing Services | SALESWORKS » Salescopy

4 Website Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make

Lori Kittelberg — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:16:30 +0000

A large part of our job here at SALESWORKS this summer has been auditing company websites, including our very own – we launched our new site in July.

This has had me thinking plenty about not just about what we do to build effective business websites, but also about the things businesses still do that can defeat the purposes of their website, those purposes being:

Raise brand awareness;
Boost prospects and leads;
Drive sales.

As a writer and communications specialist, there are the top 4 mistakes I see on company websites:

Unclear Messaging

You know what you do – after all, you live and breathe it. However, your average website visitor does not necessarily know what you do or the depth and breadth to which you do it. It seems obvious that your target audience needs to easily identify what you do, but a lot of businesses fail to make their messaging clear.

Many website home pages seem to be written under the mistaken assumption that if the browser found your website, they automatically know what you do. In fact, your homepage is where you should make your elevator pitch, which can be expanded upon in the About page.

Lost Identity

Yes, you resell software made by another company, be it Microsoft, Sage, SAP, Epicor, etc. But don’t lose yourself in the process. You need to tell visitors why you’re the best outfit to buy it from, implement it and maintain it. After all, selecting the right solution provider is the key to software solution implementation success.

This of course also relates to creating unique copy rather than simply duplicating copy from software vendor websites – not only will doing this bury your identity, but it will also hurt your SEO (read Website Copy – What is it Saying About Your Business? for details). Make your identity clear on each and every page through your copy and page design. Drill in why you are the No. 1 choice and make your business unforgettable.

Squandered Lead Gen Opportunities

Your responsibility doesn’t end with getting warm bodies to visit your website; it’s only the beginning. Offering visitors an opportunity to give you valuable contact and/or business information in exchange for a relevant resource – a white paper, video or evaluation tool – can drive leads.

There are 2 keys here:

Offering something unique and valuable to prospects. Ditch the tired brochures that can be found on the websites of your competition. Invest in creating unique downloads that speak to the expertise your business offers clients.
Creating compelling offer copy. Rather than simply providing a link to your offer, create compelling copy to “sell” it, with a graphic treatment that makes it stand out. Placement of the offer can also drive lead generation; often, placing it in the middle of the page rather than at the bottom boosts conversions while also providing a visual break to the rest of the page copy.

Ineffective or Nonexistent Blogging

Consistently posting content to a blog on your business website means you always have fresh content, and search engines like this, meaning it drives your SEO.

However, there are a few ways you can negate these benefits. One is to have a single person identified as your company blogger, usually someone in marketing (don’t be offended, marketing/communications folks – I’m one of you!). You want your blog to reflect your business’s depth of experience, so have different people from various departments blog on their respective areas of expertise.

Make sure you share your content too. No point producing it if no one knows it’s there. Encourage visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed. Posting links via social media like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook will help drive brand recognition in addition to SEO.

Now Get Cracking

Now you know the mistakes most businesses make and you suspect you’re making a few of them. Not sure how to proceed, or lacking the time and resources to do it yourself? Contact Us to talk to one of our website design and consulting experts.

*World’s Worst Website image © http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/

What to Do When Someone Plagiarizes Your Content

Lori Kittelberg — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:00:07 +0000

You’ve been diligent and invested the time and resources to create original copy promoting your products and/or services. Your team has put together a blog that speaks specifically to how they have resolved pains particular to your industry. Then wham – you find it all on someone else’s website.

Plagiarism Today offers a thorough list of steps to detecting plagiarism and how to then deal with it. Plagiarism Today Editor, Jonathan Bailey, a copyright and plagiarism consultant, notes that business content is increasingly being pilfered.

“In nearly all cases where a business is the victim, it’s another business doing the plagiarizing,” notes Bailey.

Cease & Desist

First, contact the plagiarist via a cease and desist letter. Tell them to remove the content, give them a deadline and lay out the consequences for not complying. Your level of success can vary depending on where the offending party is.

I once worked for a business that had its professionally-shot product photographs reused by a competitor both on and offline. Both companies were in the same city. My boss and I crafted a letter using our collective copyright knowledge. The company quit using the photos shortly after that.

You can gather copyright information by visiting the US Copyright Office or the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.

DMCA Notice

If they don’t act, file a notice to have the infringing material removed from the web. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protects online service providers from being found liable for copyright infringement – in return, they must remove infringing material fast when notified.

If the same offender has repeated complaints against them, they may have their website blocked completely.

Be forewarned, filing a DMCA notice is a very detail-oriented (and some say painful) procedure, so prepare yourself accordingly.

Take Legal Action

You may also opt to go to court, though this can be tricky, not to mention costly, if the offending party is in a different country.

If you have already sent the cease and desist letter, ramp it up a notch and have it sent on a lawyer’s letterhead. If you happen to have a lawyer friend who will pass on his letterhead gratis, all the better. Often a threat that seems viable, regardless of whether following through actually is viable, will do the trick.

If you’re looking for a good starting point, Plagiarism Today provides free Cease & Desist and DCMA (to host and search engine) stock letters.

An Ounce of Prevention

If you haven’t been burned and want to avoid it, there some steps you can take to better safeguard your content, says Bailey.

Though with text, there is little you can do to prevent it from being copied, you can carefully track it. Bailey suggests using Google Alerts for static content and FairShare for a dynamic website such as a blog “or anything else in an RSS feed.” Both of these tools are free.

For images or videos, “the only sure-fire technique is to place visible watermarks on your image to ensure that, if they are taken, they will be attributed to you,” Bailey says. With images, you could register your works with an automatic monitoring service like ImageRights – Bailey has put together a step-by-step guide to doing this.

3 Reasons You Should Not Plagiarize Your B2B Copy

Lori Kittelberg — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:16:54 +0000

Plagiarizing B2B copy, whether for marketing your products and services or for your blog, is a dangerous idea.

To be clear, plagiarism is not republishing someone else’s story with their permission and credit given to them – it is taking someone else’s work and representing it as your own original work.

Though the Internet has arguably made it easier for writers to gather information, it has also made it easier to steal someone else’s work. And yes, it is stealing.

Business Content Plagiarism on the Rise

In most cases where business copy is misappropriated, the culprit is another business, says Jonathan Bailey, editor of Plagiarism Today and a copyright and plagiarism consultant.

“The business side of plagiarism is growing more rapidly as the rise of freelancing and small Web-based business are putting more people with limited experience (or scruples) in the position to be a business plagiarist,” Bailey explained in an email interview.

So before you copy and paste, consider these 3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Plagiarize B2B Copy:

1. You’ll Hurt Your SEO

As noted in Website Copy – What Is it Saying About Your Business, recycling copy is frowned upon by search engines and penalized accordingly. Search engines filter out duplicate content based on a number of factors, including date published, effectively neutering your ability to rank with them. Makes reusing that copy pretty pointless, doesn’t it?

This is the biggest issue Partners who reuse Microsoft copy face. Microsoft obviously isn’t going to sue you for reusing their promo copy. However, if you think you’re going to rank above Microsoft using their copy, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.

2. You Lose Credibility

Blogs seem to be increasingly targeted by the copy-paste bunch. I was recently researching a story and found a great blog post with tons of valuable information. I later found the same story, word for word, posted on a different, unassociated blog with a different writer’s byline.

Now, if I was a customer I would certainly not be inclined to do business with someone who had stolen content from another website. A blog is really supposed to be your stories told in your voice. So to me, reusing someone else’s content is an indication of a lack of honesty.

3. You Are Breaking the Law

You read that correctly. Though the act of copying and pasting may seem innocuous, it is indeed illegal.

The content’s creator has copyright on their work right from the moment it’s created. In other words, it doesn’t need to be registered for that copyright to exist (though it does provide a handy paper trail if the creator takes a plagiarist to court). Visit the US Copyright Office or the Canadian Intellectual Property Office for more information.

Though you may be concerned about the resources it will require to put together unique, compelling copy for your website, in the end, it pays off. Stay tuned for tips on what to do if your company falls victim to a plagiarist.

Website Copy – What Is It Saying About Your Business?

Erica Hakonson — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:52:43 +0000

At the end of another week of riveting client meetings that have posed many great questions about a variety of topics, these questions are my inspiration for this week’s blog – WEBSITE COPY – What Makes It? What Breaks It?

Many of SALESWORKS’ clients are concerned about how their website copy represents their business. Is my website copy too long? Why isn’t my website traffic converting to leads and sales? Is my website copy too product focused?

Recycling Copy

Unfortunately, there are many ways Partners fail with website copy. The No. 1 common error is recycling product copy from the Microsoft, Oracle, Sage and SAP websites, including: webpages, white papers and product brochures. Not only will your website visitors be bored with generic content duplicated from another website, but if you are using the same website copy as Microsoft there is absolutely nothing unique about what you are offering your prospective customers. Not to mention you will be penalized by the search engines for using duplicate copy. Original copy will appeal to your readers and the search engines ranking your website.

Short Copy vs. Long Copy

The debate on short copy versus long copy is endless; however, in our experience at SALESWORKS, content matters more than the length of the page. As long as your content is valuable, relevant and easy to consume, your audience will scroll down the page – short or long. The easy to consume portion of this equation is overlooked on many websites, meaning, make your content digestible with white space, bullet points, headlines and subheadlines.

Unlike books, where the reader must read every word to understand the story, your website should be laid out to be skimmed or scanned by the reader; allowing them to get the gist of what you offer from the headlines and bullets. This provides the reader with the ability to dive into the sections of the webpage that intrigue them most. The layout of the webpage is just as important as the words on the page.

Website Traffic Does Not Equal Leads

There are many reasons that your website may drive traffic but not drive leads or sales. In order to address the root problem you must be able to answer the following questions:

Is there a clear call to action identified?

Does your webpage copy resonate with your audience?

Is your website copy original or duplicated from others’ webpages?

What have you offered that is different from your competitors?

Are focusing on the product and not on your business?

Have you identified the lead source of every lead in your sales pipeline (some could be from your website, you just have to ask)?

Answering these questions can provide ways to improve your website copy and lead to improving conversion rates. Even with websites that are Search Engine Optimized (SEO’d), if the website copy and website offers do not relate to your target audience, you can increase website traffic but see little in the way of lead conversions.

Products Can Be Bought Anywhere

As mentioned previously, you should evaluate your website to see if you are positioning yourself as a unique competitor in the business management software market. Are you too product focused in your website copy? If your big push is that you offer Microsoft Dynamics software, then your prospects can buy that from any Microsoft software reseller.

Do you offer proprietary add-on solutions that enhance the performance of Microsoft Dynamics? Have you cornered a niche industry or market, delivering solutions’ flexibility, scalablity and proficiently to a niche (e.g. engineering firms)? Are you a one-stop shop that can offer everything from software to services and infrastructure? Your market positioning should be apparent throughout your website, communicating what makes you unique from the next software reseller and why you are the right business for your prospective customers.

The Evolution of Website Copy

Website copy is never complete, in this way it is also not like a book. You don’t get to publish the copy and never look at again. Your business is dynamic – your business is learning and gaining experience every day. Let your prospects know.

Not only is it important to keep your content fresh and relevant for search engines to feed from, but your potential clients should also be aware of a new industry you serve or add-on product you have developed. Share this information through a variety of forums on your website– with a weekly blog, testimonials, proprietary offers, case studies, servicing a new industry (publishing a new webpage) and the list goes on.

Remember to reevaluate, assess and consider endlessly – does your website accurately represent your business and what you have to offer?

Online Grammar Gaffes Can Cost You B2B Sales

Lori Kittelberg — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:11:56 +0000

We have all seen it. Surfing online, whether it’s for a business software solution or the perfect bed and breakfast, poor spelling, incorrect use of punctuation and overall bad grammar is out there.

When you are writing copy for your website or company blog, you need to take care that you are leaving the right impression on potential buyers. Your online presence can make or break a sale. I often research my purchases and make final decisions, at least in part, based on a company’s website. And I know I’m not alone.

Yes, I’m a writer, so I can be a bit hard-headed about the whole grammar thing. But it’s a competitive world. In today’s economy, can you afford to lose a client over something that could have been easily avoided?

Here are three online marketing grammar gaffes to avoid:

1. Incorrect use of quotations:

Do not use quotation marks to emphasize a word. Instead, make it bold or italic. Otherwise, you are indicating irony. I recall walking past a barber shop that advertised:

For a chuckle, have a look at The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.

2. Punctuation overuse and abuse:

Commas and exclamation marks are particularly abused. Though I could dedicate an entire series of blogs to this matter, here are a couple of pointers.

If you are writing a list, you don’t need a comma before the final ‘and’ – e.g. “The quick brown fox jumped over the fence, ditch and shrub.”

The exception to this rule is in the case that there is an ‘and’ in the second-last item of your list – e.g. “The hockey game left fans in laughter, shock and awe, and tears.” OWL is a good resource if you are experiencing comma confusion.

As for exclamation marks, I think that one is pretty self-explanatory!!! Don’t you?! If the writing is compelling, you won’t need all those exclamation marks to emphasize your point!

3. Homonym confusion:

Their, they’re, there; your, you’re; and it’s, its are the biggest offenders in the words that sound alike but indeed are very different. Sadly, incorrect usage of these words is popping up everywhere, including online marketing. When in doubt, consult your (not you’re) dictionary.

Writing Effective Sales Copy – Why You Need It

Erica Hakonson — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:00:16 +0000

As you can imagine, being the newest member of the SALESWORKS team, the learning curve here is exponential. Luckily, I have some talented teachers. My first endeavor is writing effective online sales copy.

Effective sales copy is pulse of your website.

Your sales copy must evoke an emotion in the reader and compel them to take action. This can be accomplished through addressing the following:

PAINS – Identifying common pain points.
SOLUTIONS – Providing ideal solutions to the pains.
BENEFITS – Highlighting unique benefits of your solutions (not features).
BUILD TRUST – Building trust through experience and remove the risk.
OFFER – Offering relevant information that compels a call to action.

It is vital that you catch the reader’s attention, identify with their situation, peak their interest, and provide enough detail about your solution(s) that they want to know more.

You must know your market, so you can lead your reader through the text by simple formatting tailored to their interests. Creating headlines/subheadlines for key topics, breaking apart paragraphs, and using bullet list are easy ways draw the reader’s eye through simple formatting techniques.

Remember AIDA – Attention, Interest, Detail, Action

Most importantly, call your reader to action! Don’t assume the reader knows the next step you want them to take. You must ‘ask for the order’ with an offer – download a whitepaper, join our newsletter, sign up for our webinar, speak to a consultant, provide a case study, etc.

Remember, writing effective sales copy for your website is essential to meaningful, measurable results. At SALESWORKS, those are the results we live by.