This is NOT the job for the CEO, CMO or other internal staff

This may actually come as a surprise, but it is not the job of any of the internal employees to write sales copy for a website, a brochure, sales letter, or even a postcard. Sales copy is written from a position of persuasion. Typically, employees tend to write sales copy from the perspective

 of features and sometimes, if you’re lucky, benefits. The simple truth is nobody buys features. You can say that it is made of titanium, that it has eight cylinders, that it's medical grade stainless steel, or that you have a complete law library on site, but the simple truth is none of this matters to a prospect. Now, if you decide to go a little deeper and say what the benefit of those things are. This is better, but it's still not good. The problem is that someone who works for your business is probably trained in your industry, not writing. They are probably not trained in copywriting. Writers not trained in this specific style almost always default to writing about only features and benefits. If the goal is to sell more of your product or service, you definitely do not want to have this kind of copy being produced for your business.

Use professional copywriters

The simple truth is copywriting is an art. It is the marriage of a prospect’s desires with the features and benefits of your solution, using persuasive copy that is designed and engineered to get the prospect to take the actions that you as a business owner want them to take. It's essential that this is done in the right sequence. When a piece of copy is improperly structured, you end up having the prospect jumping to conclusions or making assumptions that may not be correct nor get them to take the actions you want. Professional copywriters know this and they're trained to walk your prospect along the path, building up trust, giving them reasons to act, answering questions that they may not even know they have. This is done in a way that is engaging without being pushy. Proper content creation builds trust and positions a prospect to not only buy your product or service, but also to become engaged with your company, making them more likely to buy again as well as to refer.

Use internal staff to strategize with external writers

The brand CMO and director of marketing should participate in copy-strategy conversations and work with professional, EXTERNAL copywriter(s) and content producers to do the writing. Do not just assume the writer can do the job without guidance. They will need input and you should always have a hand in to make sure your message is correct.

Strategy of Strategies

The highest level marketing begins with a strategy of strategies. While this may sound slightly confusing, a strategy of strategies takes individual initiatives that you may have within the company ensures that they are all married together so that they work with synchronicity. For example, if you have a Mother's Day promotion, then logically that Mother's Day promotion would end once Mother's Day occurs. When you're using a strategy and strategies, you are thinking about the next promotion. And the one after that, and the one after that. Every strategy handshakes with proceeding and the following strategy. But again, this comes back to marketing congruency, where everything seems to flow naturally, especially from the perspective of the prospect. All marketing strategies are planned in advance on a marketing calendar. This allows you to not only make sure that every strategy flows from one to the other, but it also allows you to repeat the calendar yearly, making investments with ongoing improvements. You are always able to optimize each of the campaigns that you were running at any one given time.

Management needs to work with the copywriting team to create a marketing calendar that has an overarching, or parent, strategy with sub, or baby, strategies, working seamlessly underneath it. It's important not to underestimate the difficulty in putting all these pieces together and it is essential that you have an effective coach to help you put all of the strategies together in a way that ensures success.

If you need some direction with creating your strategy or finding a copywriter, click the link below to start the conversation.