Category Archives: Copywriting

Create Online & Offline Branding Strategies That Support Each Other

Copywriting, Reputation, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Branding both online and offlineTo keep up with their competitors, companies should be cognizant of the power of offline branding. Even online merchants use offline branding, whether it’s in the form of multi-million dollar advertising campaigns or through word-of-mouth from employees. “Branding strategies are more than just a company’s image; it encompasses the experience you want people to have when interacting with your organization,” says Jody Bivens, art director at UPBrand, a firm that helps companies to hone their brand visibility. “It is important to keep your branding consistent so people ‪have the same experience with your company every time. That means the look, feel and tone of your brand’s voice – both digitally and in the physical world – should reflect what you want your company to stand for.” Continue reading for tips on how to build on and manage your company’s brand reputation and align your offline and online advertising.

Types of Offline Brands

Analyze your audience, and determine what offline brand types are most effective for converting new customers, as well as reinforcing relationships with current ones. If your target market is not Internet savvy, consider talk radio ads. Print campaigns, billboards, television commercials, and vehicle wraps may work for businesses with large budgets. Business cards can be modified to fit your brand as well. If your brand prides itself on innovation, you could use plastic cards to convey a unique sensibility. Eco-friendly brands could print business cards on recycled or seed paper.

Other areas of offline branding to show consistency with online branding include stationery, annual reports, brochures, direct mail, and trade show banners. Grassroots advertising and word-of-mouth promotion can also help a company’s brand. Make sure your employees understand your brand’s mission and can effectively convey it to clients and prospects.

Brand Guidelines

Establish your brand’s guidelines and make sure your message is consistent across the board, to ensure continuity in all forms of advertising. Create a brand guideline handbook and send copies to your employees. Dean Marsden, video marketer at Koozai, a digital marketing firm, says this handbook should include the following:

  • A brand overview.
  • A logo visual guide with correct and incorrect logo usage example.
  • Brand colors for all forms of advertising.
  • A copywriting guide with tone of voice and correct brand name format.
  • A glossary of terms related to your brand.

If you use an outside ad agency, keep them updated with any changes in this handbook, so they will consistently know what the goal of your brand is. That way advertisements will reflect well on your brand and target the right consumers. Perfecting your brand’s tone of voice in its communication is vital and can only come with consistency.

Think about what makes your company stand out from the competition, and try describing your brand as a consumer, to glean insights, writes MailChimp content strategist Kate Kiefer Lee. She also suggests teams brainstorm, and use emotional responses to guide a brand’s tone.

By Peter Marino, owner of reelWebDesign.com, a complete digital marketing company in NYC.

Onsite vs. Offsite Blogging: The Pro’s and Con’s

Copywriting, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing

If you’re planning on starting a blog, at some point you’ll have to decide whether to host your blog on your own website or on an offsite blogging platform like WordPress or Blogger. Here are the pros and cons to each decision.

Offsite Blogging: The Benefits

The biggest benefit of offsite blogging is that it’s free. A domain name costs about $9 a year, web hosting costs about $5 to $10 a month.
Another benefit is that it’s easier. You don’t have to go through the process of setting up a WordPress (or other platform) blog. You don’t need to go through the process of buying a domain name, setting up your DNS, buying and setting up web hosting, so on and so forth.
For beginning marketers, the difference between free and $20 could be important. New marketers often start out broke, and sometimes have to go through a handful of failed websites before they start making money. Starting on an offsite blogging platform allows beginning marketers to experience making money without risking their own money.

Offsite Blogging: The Drawbacks

There are many drawbacks to offsite blogging. First, it looks less professional. A blog that’s hosted on blogger.com will always look less professional than a blog that’s hosted on your own domain. A less professional looking blog generally means less publicity and likely lower search engine rankings.
Another drawback is that you’re at the whim of someone else’s company. If blogger or WordPress suddenly changes their policy, they can just turn your site off on a whim. This has happened to many bloggers in the past. Basically you’re not in full control of your business.
An offsite blog is less flexible. You can’t install your own custom plugins or themes. You’re pretty much stuck with the designs that the offsite service provides to you. Although WordPress has many beautiful themes to choose from that have great plugins included.

The Comparison: Offsite VS Onsite

Basically, onsite blogging will allow you to get higher rankings, look more professional and most likely be more successful, get more traffic and earn more money in the long run. Offsite blogging allows you to start with no startup costs at all and allows you to bypass the website setup process and get started right away. One quick note: You can’t ever really move an offsite blog to an onsite blog. You’ll lose many of your visitors and all of your search engine rankings.

Which is the best option for you? If you’re just getting started in internet marketing and want to get your feet wet right away, then offsite blogging is a great way to jump in feet first without a high learning curve. You can start blogging within 15 minutes of choosing a topic.
On the other hand, if you already know how to buy a domain or currently have a website, how to setup hosting, how to direct your DNS, etc, and you don’t mind spending the $40.00-$3000.00 (if using a pre-made theme or making a custom theme) in startup costs, then onsite blogging is most likely a better and more profitable option for you in the long run.
I prefer the latter as it has boosted my own domains search engine status and notability in just 2 years which ultimately increased customer loyalty, trustworthiness and sales; all of which is priceless!

By Peter Marino: Senior Partner and CMO of a search engine marketing web design firm in New York City.
If you want to start a blog but don’t feel comfortable writing for it regularly we can set it up, design it and write for you on just about any topic! We have writers from all over the USA and Canada that can write for you, and you get all the credit! Try our blog writing and marketing and see your website soar up in ranking on Google and Bing.

Copywriting Tips that Can Make or Break Your Marketing Campaign

Copywriting, Web Design, ,

Copywriting is the one skill which all online business owners should learn. As an online marketer you communicate through words – if those words aren’t effectively conveying your message, then you’re in for a long and bumpy ride or a short drive off a cliff!
Here are a few copywriting tips to help you get started:

1. Know your Target Market – Good copywriters know exactly who they’re writing for before starting. They speak directly to ONE person and keep that same person in mind at all times. If you try to reach too many people with your copy you’ll end up missing your target altogether and not reaching anyone at all. Before starting, know exactly who you’re writing your copy for and stick to it.

2. Headlines that Intrigue – Use clear headlines throughout your copy to guide the reader. Your main headline should be in bold and large letters to grab the reader’s attention. It is often the headline which can either make or break your copy. Use a benefit-focused headline, which explains in powerful detail how you can help solve the customer’s problem. Then use sub-headlines throughout the copy to keep the reader intrigued so they will keep reading.

3. Don’t use Big Words – Online writing is different to the writing you did in English class. Throw out the text book and forget all those rules your teacher taught you. Online writing is casual and needs to convey emotion and a clear purpose. You need to speak to the person as though you’re sitting down with them and chatting over a coffee… stay away from big words and long adjectives or risk boring (and losing) your prospects!

4. Be Persuasive – If you love your product that’s great but it’s also a bit biased. Your customers want to hear from other unbiased people who have used your product. Include customer testimonials but not just any testimonial will do, the more information you can include the better. Try to include the person’s full name, city, state, website URL and if possible a picture of that person. The more information your testimonial includes the more persuasive and believable.

5. It’s not all about you! – In fact, it’s not about you at all. Effective copywriting is concerned with the needs of the customer. The writer doesn’t really matter… Of course, you may need to add a little personal information about yourself in order to gain trust and to explain why your customer should trust you, but even in this case it’s all about what you can do for them. Go through your copy, does it contain a lot of “I’s” then it’s time for a serious re-write. Go back and change most of those “I’s” to “You’s”. Your writing should always be about the customer.

6. Don’t forget the call – The call to action that is. You must guide your visitors and tell them what you expect them to do. If you want them to click over and purchase your weight loss product, say so, and say so in a clear way which promotes all the benefits of your products “Click here to learn how you can lose those last 10 pounds and keep it off for good” . You may want to “Twitclick” the hypertext to track its performance. If it is a brochure, flyer or self mailer I recommend you have a special splash page made to drive visitors to and use a free google analytics tool to see the ROI of your campaign.
Above all be precise in your wording and always include a clear call to action. If you can’t invest the time to write or lack the talent to do so hire a copywriter. It’s the best investment in advertising that you can make!

By Peter Marino

Keyword Research is Key to SEO that Works

Copywriting, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Web Design, , ,

When you say the words “keyword search” to most internet marketers you’ll get one of two responses. You’ll see them groan and shudder or you’ll simply see them shrug their shoulders. The fact of the matter is that many don’t know how to or have never taken the time to do a little keyword research. It’s not difficult and the information can be invaluable. Once you know what keywords your audience is using to find relevant information, you can position your company so they the find you instead of your competition.

The first step in any keyword research project is to come up with a few words to start with. You can pull them out of the air, do a bit of brainstorming – what do you think your clients might be using to find your business? You can check your Google analytics to see what they’re using or you can check the meta data on your competition’s websites to see what keywords they’re using. Pretty sneaky, right?

Once you have a handful of words to start with the next step is to choose your keyword research tool. They’re in abundance so you’re not stuck with the first one you land on. Google and Yahoo both offer keyword research tools and there are tools you can subscribe to like wordtracker.com.  Make sure if you’re choosing one which you have to pay for, that they offer a free trial so you can make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

Once you’re in the tool of your choice the next step is to plug in one of your beginning keywords to create some results. For example, let’s say you’re creating a surf instruction school and hunting for keywords to optimize your website. You may use ‘surf instruction’ for your beginning keywords.
You hit enter and now you have anywhere from 10 to 10,000 more keywords. Some have potential and some do not. Look for keywords which have good popularity. Meaning they’re used often. Yes some people may use the words ‘riding the waves’ but if only a handful are using those keywords they’re not going to generate much in the way of traffic or profits.

You’ll also want to look for keywords which don’t have a lot of competition. That doesn’t mean you don’t use the words “surf instruction” to optimize your website if that is the single most popular keyword phrase people use to find surf schools however if everyone is using that keyword to optimize their website it might be difficult for you to rise to the top of the rankings – which is ultimately the goal.

If you’re searching for keywords to use for search engine advertising then it will also be important to pay attention to the cost of the keyword or keyword phrase. It’s easy to blow an ad budget in a day with the wrong keyword! Not all keyword tools provide this information. If you’re going to be using search engine advertising, use that search engine’s keyword tool to generate results.

Keywords change over time so it pays to make keyword research a regular process. Some business owners are fastidious and are often looking for the next best keyword phrase, while others prefer to analyze their SEO on a quarterly or annual schedule. Take the time to make sure you’re optimizing your site and do a little keyword research – it’s really not so bad.

By Peter Marino