Are you paying to damage your brand?

Wednesday, 31 March 2010 13:53

How many times have you been introduced to a new company on the web or in a flashy brochure only to be switched off by the poor copy? The product or service may be first-rate but the company has undermined the offer with dreary or technically written copy. Add a couple of spelling mistakes, a typo or two and a failure to focus on the benefits to the customer and you have a marketing failure; it's one of the biggest self-imposed hurdles businesses put in the way to making a sale.

Relatively small grammatical errors can make a huge impact on the first time reader. The value and efficacy of the marketing message is instantly undermined. Only last weekend I was waking round the Tower of London when I spotted a typographical error on one of the information boards - on the very first line. I wondered how this could have slipped through the quality check net of such a prestigious place?

The truth is people get too close to a project and become word blind; and the Internet is full of errors. A website should be your window through which the world views your products or services, but if it's let down by poor copy you could actually be paying to damage your brand.

It may be seemingly cruel to single people out but the fact is the following are public profiles endorsed by the companies. Take for example www.abilityconsultants.com just how impotent are those words, how convincing do they make the offer or put it another way - how much are they paying to damage their brand?

In the last two weeks I've left messages about spelling mistakes for a vegetable on-line retailer and a UK Government site. They jumped out at me but clearly had been missed by many others in the preparation and planning process.

Badly written sales and promotional copy is one of the biggest reasons businesses fail to connect with new customers. It sometimes takes additional help to bring a product or service to life. Carphone Warehouse used external copywriters to make their complicated offers simple.

A simple technique to getting the grammar and spelling correct is to write all your content in Word. That way you can spell and grammar check it all before transferring it to your website. The problem with too many web content packages is there inability to spot such mistakes. Get someone who has had nothing to do with the content writing to read it before it goes live - you might be surprised at what you have missed.

This is a prime case of copy that completely fails to sell the products on offer. After reading it three times the reader is still likely to be confused about what the copy is trying to achieve. http://casanovasadventures.com/catalog/dir/news.htm

Failing to get your message and call to action across to potential customers is like planning to fail in business - why would you do that?

Recently we redesigned our website. This included a complete restructure and redrafting the copy. Instead of trusting to ourselves that it worked, we asked a select number of people that were important to us to review the site. This combination of customers and suppliers gave us some invaluable feedback - it's a strategy we would recommend to make sure your copy is effective.

If you don't have the skills in-house to write crisp, clear and compulsive copy then why not drop us a line. Our copywriting service is offering a free review of promotional material or websites. We'll report back with our recommendations on how it can generate more sales. We will offer a copy writing service to help you but if you can't see the improvements after we've done we won't charge you a penny.

We have written promotional brochures, newsletters and websites for a host of clients. See other pages on our website for examples and read what our clients say about our services.

Why carry on paying to damage your brand? Take us up on our free offer and see for yourself just how good your copy could be with our help.

PS. If you spot an error on our site, please let us know - we are only human after all!!