It's true what they say; the pen IS mightier than the sword... especially when we're separated and conjoined by cyberspace.
When it comes to copywriting in today's digital landscape, it may not be a pen that we actually wield to develop content that's used to attract visitors to our online storefronts, but the idea is the same. We pursuade our audiences to join our cause by writing engaging copy, rather than forcing our way in through their barriers... and spam filters - at least, those of us who would rather put a little extra elbow-grease in the marketing engine up front, so we can reap much larger and cheaper rewards for the long haul, do it this way.
It's time to drop the adage that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission:
Before founding Orange Pegs I was in b2b sales, working in corporate advisory services and staffing. Believe it or not, but I was a cold-caller for about a decade... and I represented the very evil that I preach against day in and day out.
& I was good... really good.
Why? ... Because I knew that once I got my foot in the door they would be happy I was there, so I was relentless. I do good business, and if you were able get past the fact that I weaseled my way in front of you without your permission, you'd probably take a liking to my sense of humor and commitment to quality.
More often, however, my foot landed squarely in my mouth, because when we cold-call, bombs are lurking around every corner - like the time I dropped in on a prospective customer, and was told by the teary-eyed receptionist that my contact, and her beloved former boss, had been deceased long enough to where I should have known, but recently enough where it still caused unbearable grief to those who cared about him.
That was about 6 years ago, and I still think about it often, because it was revelatory on so many levels. - And I felt absolutely horrible.
Today, things are much different, both for me personally and the way people consume marketing and sales at large. Consumers are smarter and more empowered and are using content to diagnose and solve their problems. And, copywriting (/content marketing) is on the forefront of it all.
1: You Position Your Sales Teams for Success
The reality is that when we cold-call, we rely on "muscle memory," as one of my former CEOs put it, to kick down the barriers and gatekeepers standing in our way.
We use worn-out elevator pitches, our thick skin, a pile of Dunn & Bradstreet reports or data from purchased lists (often inaccurate), and gallons upon gallons of caffeine.
But when you use copywriting services to open the doors to your sales, it results in a much different outcome. In addition to being more effective in engaging your prospects to your product or service offering, you start off with their PERMISSION, and position yourself as a trusted source of information... not a disingenuous slime-bag.
2: You Know Your Audience
One of my favorite things about copywriting services (or content marketing) is that we learn about what motivates our prospects by paying attention to the content they download, the blog posts they read and share, and the emails they open and click.
With traditional cold-calling, we have to rely on the notes of our predecessors (and let's be honest, they didn't make it for a reason, right?) and purchased lists. And where did those purchased lists come from anyway? How did they get the leads to sell to your company to begin with, and did they have any idea you were going to call on them?
Of course not! There's a reason why an acceptable open rate for emails sent to those lists is well below 10%, as opposed to my inbound emails that typically soar over 30%... and why click-through rates are typically outweighed by marks for spam and unsubsubscribes. I had a client recently who didn't bat an eye at the fact that only 2% of their 8% opened emails were clicked through and that more than double that were marked as spam.
You don't even want to know how much they paid for that list that didn't generate a single sale. What's worse is that I heard nearly exactly the same story (and numbers) from two other clients within a two-week time-span.
This is normal? I guess so... just as normal as it is for a cold-caller to ask for somebody who hasn't worked there for years, or to open their pitch with, "Could I speak to the business owner, please?"
The "business owner?" Come on... we can do better than that, people - a LOT better.
3: You Educate BEFORE You Call
The elevator pitch is such a funny thing, isn't it? We have to cram all of our knowledge about our product and service offerings in addition to uncovering pain points in a 15 - 30 second span. What's crazy about it is that we also need to know enough about our prospects' needs before going into it, because being off even the slightest can kill all of our progress in the blink of an eye.
Educating somebody in 30 seconds is hard enough... educating and SELLING is ridiculous. Think about how many of those prospects who hang up on you are good fits for what you're pitching but will never know because they can't stand your method of communication.
The reality is that when we cold-call, it's like going to Vegas... we pitch the same thing based on the odds that the person we're talking to is the decision-maker and that we can BS our way into having a real conversation. The idea is that if you throw enough shit at the wall, something will stick eventually.
With copywriting services, we provide access to a great deal of knowledge about the problems we solve, and we allow our prospects to determine the rate at which they learn about everything. With the blogs we post, we educate about pain points that they can relate to, and provide insight into the fact that others feel your pain too.
And by reading your blogs and downloading your content, they learn all about the problems you solve, and why they're so important to take care of.
4: They Feel Like You're HELPING
This is huge. Well, all of it is, but this one always got me, because even in those instances when I was able to penetrate accounts with cold-calling, there was always an air of apprehension about working with me. I was disrupting their days, and very likely made somebody look bad - either the receptionist who let me through, or the person who didn't have the wherewithal to find me before I found them... There's always going to be this notion that I'm a bad guy, no matter how good I am.
With copy, well, we start off on the right foot. Our prospects likely found us because we implemented an effective SEO strategy, and came up in a simple Google or Bing search - whether it was our website directly or a blog we posted about the exact problem they were experiencing.
They relate to us because they feel like we relate to them. It's absolutely beautiful, and they feel like we're helping because we ARE helping. What's not to like about that?
5: You Validate Your Mission Statement
I've sat in many office lobbies and conference rooms and have seen many mission statements mounted on the walls of said structures. I've also represented them, and over the years it became really difficult for me to accept that a company cares about me when they place so little value in my time. I can only imagine how many others felt the same about the companies I represented because I was constantly barging in on their day.
Do you want your customers to believe you care? Give them copy. Do you want your prospects to believe that you understand their pain? Give them copy. Do you want to show the world that you're committed to quality connections? Reduce your dependency on cold-calling, and... you got it - give them copy.
Your Sales Process is Begging for Content
Copywriting is pretty straightforward when you break it down, and there are a ton of ways you can harness its educational powers to remove the barriers between you and your sales objectives... between you and your prospective clients, that is.
Learn more about how to incorporate content into your outreach efforts with this free ebook about inbound marketing: