It can be easy to get sidetracked and forget about the really important stuff – or even what the important stuff really is. No matter whether you are marketing your business online or off line, you’ll need to consider two very important aspects to every marketing campaign: Copywriting and Graphic Design. Which is more important?

First, it’s important to understand the goals of each. The purpose for copywriting is to get the prospect to take action. If your copy isn’t moving your prospect toward some meaningful action that you want them to take then it isn’t effective. Plain and simple, copy persuades.

Graphic design’s job is to support the copy. Does that mean it is less important? Not at all. It is equally important, but it isn’t the primary goal. If you have pretty graphics and no copy then no one is going to take action. That’s art, not marketing.

It’s important that you focus on the needs and desires of the consumer. Write great copy that persuades and enhance your message with great graphics. You’ll close sales in no time.

Writing for business has changed a little since the advent of the Internet, but not much. It used be, back in the days of off line marketing when companies would put together a slick brochure or television commercial, that marketing and PR departments would brainstorm for a catchy motto or slogan and build an advertising campaign around it. The idea was to “push” the product or service being marketed onto an unsuspecting public we all called prospects, or “the target market”. Well, happily, we don’t do it quite that way any more.

The new business writing, while it is still focused on sales, isn’t quite so stuffy. Rather, it’s more personal and based mostly on “pull” marketing – the idea that we will entice those interested in our product or service into finding us. In some ways, this is better marketing.

You might think it involves less work because we don’t have to chase the targets until we catch them. Actually, it’s harder work because now we have to think up ways to get the “target” to chase us. That’s a bit more of a challenge. But if you can do it well then you’ll be chased a lot.

Business writing may not have changed it complete focus – sales, conversions, driving traffic – but it has changed the way it engages the customer and directs toward the goal. But it’s still business writing. Just a little more creative.

Copyblogger has a good guide on how to write titles that can hook your readers. It’s a good guide and well worth reading.  Good titles help to attract readers. Whether it is a bookmark or an RSS feed, sometimes the only information available to a prospective reader is that title so you have to make it count. This is particularly true if you want to attract new visitors, and who doesn’t.

Don’t be fooled by some of the hype surrounding page titles. They are important and they do provide the hook that brings visitors in. However, you have to deliver when it comes to content and that content has to be written in the voice that is suited to the occasion.

What is important is that your title offers the reader something. Sometimes titles don’t offer anything, in fact they tell the whole story. The heading to this post could have been – Hook Readers With Titles That Promise – Then Deliver. You would not be reading this line now if I had – the whole story was in the title.

Provide a reason for someone to come visiting, then satisfy that reason. If they visitors leaves thinking, that was worth the visit – they will return. If they leave thinking the visit was a waste of time – they won’t return. Your catchy title may get them once, you might event get them twice, but if your content doesn’t deliver, don’t expect to get them a third time.

At the heart of every piece of copy that sells is one thing, and trust me when I say it isn’t good writing. That one thing, if you copy has it, will do more to sell your product or service than all the great writing in the world. Do you know what it is? Well, do you?

It’s real simple. The answer is (drumroll) …

Rapport.

That’s it. Simple. Right?

The most important part of your copywriting is to build rapport with your readers, but not just any reader. You’ve got to build rapport with the right reader. The right reader for your product or service.

Let’s say you are building a website that sells green widgets and you know the only people in the world who would have any use for green widgets are red midgets. If you write your content to sell green widgets to anybody other than red midgets, you can have the best copy in the world and it won’t matter. You might make a few sales, but you’re targeting the wrong audience. On the other hand, write mediocre content that connects with red midgets – I mean content that really appeals to their deepest need – and you’ll sell a lot of those green widgets.

Think about that the next time you write a web page. Appeal to the right audience and build rapport. It’s the most important thing to remember about good copywriting.

Business writing is different to other types of writing. Even between technical and non-technical types of writing, there are some differences. Writing marketing content for businesses requires a special eye and ear. You have to know what makes people tick, what motivates them. What kind of words trigger an emotional response, and what can you do to elicit the type of response that you want from your readers.

Those are all special kinds of knowledge. If you know what motivates people to act a certain way and you can create the circumstances to get them to act that way then you have power. And that’s the kind of power that anyone who writes for business should have.

One special kind of business writing is blogging. When you write a blog post, you are not writing a technical document. It’s a special type of “conversational marketing”. But it is business writing.

Online writing, or marketing, has several different methods of conversational marketing. This kind of business writing is unique in that it isn’t stuffy or overly sophisticated. It’s conversational. And it connects with people because readers get a sense that a real person – someone just like themselves – are writing it. If you write content that makes you sound like an average, run-of-the-mill person who wants to do business with someone and build their trust then you write for business online. It just takes a little discipline.

Should small business owners use copywriters? In the past, too many small businesses shunned the use of copywriters because they couldn’t justify the expense. But you don’t have to do that any more. In fact, I’d say you should spend the money. A good copywriter is worth the investment.

Copywriters today do more than just write press releases and marketing brochures. They also write website content and perform other online marketing tasks. They can write articles and blog content or assist you with your social media campaigns. Today’s copywriters are much more versatile and even go so far as to learn search engine optimization in order to remain competitive.

And the best part is that global competition has driven the price of copywriting way down. You used to be have to pay hundreds of dollars for a copywriter worth his weight in grain, but because the Internet has stiffened the competition among copywriters you can get a decent one now for about half the price of what you’d have paid 20 years ago.

You cannot afford to let your business be represented by amateurs. Your website and online marketing content will be alive forever. You want it to be golden, to be professional, and a good copywriter can help you with that.

If you’ve heard that content is king then you understand why it’s important to get people to read. Online, content is not only king, but formatting your content correctly is the crown on the king’s head. No one will read your content if it doesn’t promise them benefits and deliver on that promise. To do that effectively there are three specific headline formats you can use to get more people to read your content.

Headline Format No. 1

The first headline format is real simple. Ask a question.

To effectively use this headline format you have to ask a question that a large number of people you want to reach would ask. If you can ask a question that is a popular search query then so much the better. Your question, however, must promise a benefit to the reader and your content must deliver on the promise. Be sure to use keywords. Here are three examples of the question format using the keyword phrase “Headline Format”:

• Does Your Headline Format Drive Customers Away?
• How Important Is Headline Format?
• Which Headline Format Is The Right One For You?

Notice that each question promises the reader a benefit, uses the keyword phrase, and is short and to the point. So should your question headlines be.

Headline Format No. 2

Make a bold, outrageous claim. If your claim is so outrageous that it is unbelievable then it will have the opposite effect, but if you make a bold claim that is believable and promises a benefit then you will get more readers to your content. Here are three examples of bold, outrageous, believable headlines that use the key phrase “Headline Format”:

• My Headline Formats Achieve 100% Customer Satisfaction
• Why Your Headline Formats Suck
• Headline Formats: Kill Your Clients, Not Your Content

Notice that each headline is specific, bold, and believable. The first one is a bold first person statement that seems at first glance a bit narcissistic, but it promises a clear benefit. Read my content and you can achieve 100% customer satisfaction, too!

The second headline promises to tell the reader why their headlines are not up to par. The strong language assures that readers will read the post. It’s mentally jarring to be told that you suck (in a respectful way, of course).

Finally, headline No. 3 uses hyperbole to make a point. Your headlines should not be self destructive. Rather, they should knock your readers off their feets. It promises a clear benefit that the reader hopes the content will deliver on, namely, that if you read this page you’ll learn how to write headlines that get clicks.

Headline Format No. 3

The third headline format is the how to. How-to formats work because the promised benefit is the obvious: You’re going to teach something the reader wants to learn. It is the easiest of the three formats to write because all you have to do is find a popular search query that begins “how to” and copy and paste it. Here are three examples:

• How To Write Effective Headlines
• How Your Headlines Can Make Or Break You
• How To Win Friends And Influence People With Headlines

In these examples, the keyword is “headlines”. Variations of a keyword are good. They can often be just as effective. In each of these examples you promise your reader a clear benefit. The only thing left to do is deliver on your promise.

Your headline is one of the most important aspects of your page content. Use the proper headline formats and you’ll get click-throughs beyond your wildest dreams.

Have you ever heard of Maurice Jarre? I hadn’t until I read this article in WebProNews. Turns out, I should have known who he is. He wrote the music score for several high profile movies like Dead Poets Society and Doctor Zhivago.

If anyone can edit a website like Wikipedia, or publish a blog post, and throw out erroneous information that goes unchecked, how long will it be before none of us can rely on information at all? Even mainstream newspapers like Guardian and London Independent reprinted a prank quote from a Wikipedia article. If the mainstream press is doing it then how much more so are everyone else?

You may be asking what does this have to do with Internet marketing for small businesses? Plenty actually. Do you check or double check the sources you use for your blogs and articles? If so, how do you check for accuracy? How should you?

I think there are some rules of thumb we should all strive to pay attention to. Chief among those is where else can you verify the information? If you find something that purports to be true, you should check to see if you can find that information somewhere else. If not then it may not be true. Another thing to consider, and this is just as important as using more than one source, is to ensure that the sources you do use – all of the sources – are credible authoritative sources. Wikipedia is not. There are too many fingers in the pie. But Encyclopedia Britannica is. You’d like Guardian and other mainstream newspaper editors would know that. So should small business owners.

There is no substitute for good copy. Copy sells. And if you don’t have the right copy, or the best copy for your business, then you may not make the sales you want.

A good copywriter will pay for herself over and over. A bad one will cost you. Whether online or off line, it is very important to ensure that your copy is the best that it can be to sell your business and attract new customers. But what does that mean?

Here’s a short list of what good copywriting can, and should, do for you:

• Be honest about who you are and what you stand for
• Brand you and your product or service so that you are recognizable at a glance
• Sell the benefits of your product or service to new clients
• Make existing clients confirm in their minds that they chose the right business
• Answer every question your prospects will have about your product or service
• Present the best features of your product or service in the best light
• NOT be deceptive

Is your copywriting passing the test? Why or why not?

Don’t panic at the words, “press release.” They aren’t difficult to write and they don’t cost a fortune to post. Why bother? Press releases attract attention. Small businesses should announce when they launch a new product, have a major announcement such as opening a branch or a merger, working on a charitable project, or when you’d like to announce a new trade practice that significantly changes the industry. Yes, the world needs to know–starting with the Internet world because now, that’s where press releases are featured first–online.

Before you start sweating, consider that you can use a press release template–and that press releases are only one page long–actually only a few paragraphs. Take a breath now. Check out PRWeb and other online press releases sites to guide you.

What will a press release (sometimes called a news release) get you? Interest. You may get a call from a newspaper or online news site that wants to feature your product or conduct an interview or include you in an article. Your local community wants to know–local TV, radio, and newspapers needs news to fill their pages and airtime. They like featuring businesses in the area.

Start with a great title. Keep it rather short and make it interesting. Use a larger font so it stand out.

Be sure that the title and first paragraph tells what the press release is all about–a summary of the entire thing. If they don’t read any further, would they know what you wanted them to know? The old question– who, what, where and when need to be answered. Press releases aren’t sales copy–so don’t try to make a sale or use jargon that sounds that way. It’s news. It’s a series of statements. Sound professional. Write in third person–so don’t do the “I am announcing.” Speak from a company perspective, “Jenkin’s Tires Announces…”

What’s great about press releases is that you already have many of these components. You can use your logo as the header of the press release. The ending paragraph of your press release is your contact information. The “About the Company” bio you have listed on your website is also used at the end of the press release. Be sure to include contact information–website, phone number, contact person is vital. You want to be contacted, so make it easy.

Your press release can be submitted to the various online PR sites and can range in price from free to quite pricey, so set a budget and decide what’s right for your company and what level of exposure you need. You can also email or fax your press release to television, radio and other media venues.

It’s that easy. Not as big and scary as you thought. Press releases get you in touch with the media–and helps spread the word. You have every right to announce important events, and the media needs your updates. So whether you do it yourself with a template, or pay someone to write a post a press release for you, it’s a powerful tool that can yield big results.