
Whether you’re blatantly throwing money away on bad ideas or losing potential revenue by failing to capitalize on good ones, here are some surefire ways to make the least out of your investment.
Here’s a conundrum: how can you waste money on something you’re obviously saving money on by doing it yourself instead of hiring someone to do it for you? While you ponder that one, here’s another question: are you a copywriter?
If the answer is yes then stop reading and go write yourself some copy. But if you’re not then why are you writing? Stop right now and read this stupid idea before you waste another cent.
Stupid Idea 8: Write The Copy Yourself
Everyone’s got a story that goes something like this: Kitchen sink leaks. Woman tells man to call plumber. Man tells woman to stop wasting his money, takes out wrench, bangs on pipe. Pipe bursts, water floods kitchen. Woman yells at man. Man calls plumber.
Forgiving the cliché/stereotype, what might have been a simple fix is now an expensive one with “pay for new pipe” added to “pay plumber” and maybe even “replace damaged hardwood” and “see marriage counselor”.
The point we’re trying to make is that everyone has a skill set, a specialty, something they get paid to do and do well. If you’re not a copywriter then get someone to write your web copy that is. Otherwise you could be sacrificing not only your time but your business’s credibility along with sales and leads.
If you’re investing time and money in a web site you want it to be the best it can be and work for your business. Your website needs to do more than sit there and look pretty. It should speak to your customers, provide them with a call to action, and give them information that influences them to contact you, join your Facebook page, sign up for your newsletter or use your service.
You may have every good intention of telling customers what you think they need to know but there’s no substitute for the perspective of a professional copywriter. A copywriter will take into account things you may not think of… the attention span of a web shopper, the positioning of your call to action, the overall flow and readability, the relative lengths of paragraphs and words within paragraphs. A copywriter will consider your audience, the demographics, their expectations. A copywriter will agonize over the verbs and suffixes and nuances of meaning so that you don’t have to and so ultimately your business conveys its message meaningfully and professionally.
A copywriter will also provide you with a new point of view.
Sometimes it’s simply too difficult to convey a message you could recite in your sleep. When you know your products and services inside out and are emotionally and mentally immersed in your business you lose a sense of objectivity that can lead to either a self-aggrandizing tone or an inadvertent lack of detail, either of which can cost you customers.
A copywriter’s job is to look in from the outside, ask the right questions, and compose the right message for your audience.
So don’t spend time that you could otherwise invest in the job you do well (running your business). Don’t sacrifice leads or sales with bad copy that diminishes your credibility and fails to capture your customer.
And don’t lose business because of good copy that doesn’t work for the context it’s written.
Who writes the copy for your website?
Read More In The “How To Waste Your Money” Series
- Stupid Idea 1: Hire someone to do it “cheap”
- Stupid Idea 2: Fabricate an FAQ section
- Stupid Idea 3: Just start building the site
- Stupid Idea 4: Worry about search optimization “later”
- Stupid Idea 5: Believe the person who tells you they can “get your site to be number one in Google”
- Stupid Idea 6: Don’t pay attention to your domain name, where it’s registered or when it expires
- Stupid Idea 7: Get the cheapest hosting you can find
- Stupid Idea 8: Write the copy yourself
- Stupid Idea 9: Don’t worry about whether your site or database is being backed up
- Stupid Idea 10: Insist on a news section or blog
- Stupid Idea 11: Brush off social marketing as something that’s too hard/not relevant for your business
- Stupid Idea 12: Be too busy to study your analytics and decide it doesn’t really matter anyway
- Stupid Idea 13: Fall in love with Flash/Ajax/JavaScript/[insert cool technology here]
- Stupid Idea 14: Say “I don’t know” a lot
- Stupid Idea 15: Launch the site, breathe a sigh of relief and cross it off your to-do list
I am still working on my email list 😉
Yeah, I know, I know. I promised to write an eBook (or an autoresponder) series for my newsletter…I haven’t done that yet. I just don’t want to…since it seems like something everyone gives. I want to stand out.
Of course, that means I have no incentive, at least for now. I have to figure something out soon 🙂
I do have a follow up emails (bunch of auto responders). Are they related to each other? Not necessarily…most of the emails are about resources I use (all of them are free) and some other techniques I have tried (for time management and productivity).
I am still figuring out the process…setting up autoresponders. I am using normal emails, but I don’t want to waste them…I want to reuse them for my newer subscribers (at this point, I am just converting the regular emails into auto-responders for newer subscribers).
Anyways, thank you for the tips, Carol 🙂 Appreciate it!