Business-to-Business Copywriter
Welcome to the all-important second half of our website conversation, continued from last week. Last week was all about the whys of having a site. Today, let’s look at the very concrete hows of getting one up and running.
Your first step is to decide on your domain name and register it. Opinions abound about what a copywriter should call his or her website. Some copywriting gurus insist you create your own personal brand by using your name in the domain, such as www.janedoe.com. That’s fine – as long as your name hasn’t already been registered, and that’s how you plan to practice as a freelancer – simply by your name. Many of the best in the business do this. Bob Bly, Paul Hollingshead, Clayton Makepeace – to name a few. Why not you?
I chose to use my niche and “copywriter” in mine: www.b2bcopywriter.net. Inserting your niche into your URL indicates you’re serious about writing for that sector and you’re not just dabbling. If the name you want with a dot com extension is taken, see if it’s available with a .net or .biz extension. (Note: To secure a domain name, you might try GoDaddy.com – they offer .com domains for only $8.99 a year and non-dot com extensions are often cheaper.)
The most important considerations are: your domain name should be logically related to copywriting and/or easy to remember.
Once you’ve got your name registered, you need to decide what content to include on your site. The bare essentials are:
1. benefit-rich copy about why a prospect should hire you,
2. a short biography of your career-to-date, including both copywriting credentials and other professional experience,
3. writing samples (this is the bread-and-butter of the site),
4. and contact information (of course!)
When you’ve got the basics down, you can add more info as you go along such as articles, case studies, maybe even a blog.
While setting up a website can be dirt cheap, your site shouldn’t look cheap. You’ve probably come across what I call “homemade” business sites. They look like they were thrown together at the last minute. The typeface is hard to read. And the pages are plastered with hokey clipart.
When your website looks ugly or busy, it shoots a bad vibe to prospects. It gives the impression you’re not professional. Your website doesn’t have to be loaded with every bell and whistle, but it should be pleasing to the eye. My websites are nothing fancy, but they’re clean, readable, and easy to navigate.
Many web-hosting companies offer pre-designed web templates. While not a replacement for a good web designer, the templates help keep your text and graphics visually balanced. Best of all, you’ll never have to fiddle with finicky html code. You basically point and click where you want your web page elements to appear. BlueVoda (http://www.bluevoda.com) offers a point and click interface. Similar sites include GoDaddy (http://www.godaddy.com), and Register (http://www.register.com).
Last, but not least, when it comes to effective website lead generation, there’s one tool you must have: an email capture form. With this opt-in form on your site, you entice web visitors to sign up by offering a free incentive, such as an ezine, white paper or case study.
There are three major reasons why it is so important to capture your visitors email address:
1. Few web visitors take action the first time they arrive at your site. Often they’re still browsing for the right copywriter. You need to expose your “offer” six or seven times before a prospect takes action. With their email address, you can follow up with an ezine and expose them to your services multiple times – with their permission.
2. Publishing a white paper or ezine demonstrates your expertise to prospects. This builds their confidence in your abilities, which in turn makes them more likely to hire you.
3. You’re a high-ticket item. A copywriter’s services can cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars, plus a piece of the action in the form of royalties or a performance bonus. This can make for a very discriminating prospect. But when your ezine creates a rapport – and it should – it can melt away much of the natural resistance that comes from hiring an unknown and untested copywriter sight unseen.
Even when you do everything right, don’t expect a flood of prospects to immediately sign up. According to Marketing Sherpa, fewer than 10 percent of web visitors actually register for a white paper. But quality is more important than quantity. With proper promotion and persistence, you’ll be able to build prospect list in a relatively short time.
Finally, take time to plan your website – don’t rush into it out of some false sense of urgency. The need to create a steady income stream is often a very pressing and real one (trust me, I know!) – and the important of self-promotion shouldn’t be underestimated. But when you rush your website out to the world before it’s the best you can make it, it can do more harm than good. The best sites are like having an electronic business card, sales letter, resume, and portfolio case all rolled into one. Done poorly, it can kill your chances of landing a client. Done well, it can be the self-promotion tool that sets you apart from the competition. Take your time to do it right.
David Coyne is a copywriter who specializes in the business-to-business and health sectors.
http://www.b2bcopywriter.net
http://www.healthcopywriter.net
This article was first published by CopyProtege.com
Your first step is to decide on your domain name and register it. Opinions abound about what a copywriter should call his or her website. Some copywriting gurus insist you create your own personal brand by using your name in the domain, such as www.janedoe.com. That’s fine – as long as your name hasn’t already been registered, and that’s how you plan to practice as a freelancer – simply by your name. Many of the best in the business do this. Bob Bly, Paul Hollingshead, Clayton Makepeace – to name a few. Why not you?
I chose to use my niche and “copywriter” in mine: www.b2bcopywriter.net. Inserting your niche into your URL indicates you’re serious about writing for that sector and you’re not just dabbling. If the name you want with a dot com extension is taken, see if it’s available with a .net or .biz extension. (Note: To secure a domain name, you might try GoDaddy.com – they offer .com domains for only $8.99 a year and non-dot com extensions are often cheaper.)
The most important considerations are: your domain name should be logically related to copywriting and/or easy to remember.
Once you’ve got your name registered, you need to decide what content to include on your site. The bare essentials are:
1. benefit-rich copy about why a prospect should hire you,
2. a short biography of your career-to-date, including both copywriting credentials and other professional experience,
3. writing samples (this is the bread-and-butter of the site),
4. and contact information (of course!)
When you’ve got the basics down, you can add more info as you go along such as articles, case studies, maybe even a blog.
While setting up a website can be dirt cheap, your site shouldn’t look cheap. You’ve probably come across what I call “homemade” business sites. They look like they were thrown together at the last minute. The typeface is hard to read. And the pages are plastered with hokey clipart.
When your website looks ugly or busy, it shoots a bad vibe to prospects. It gives the impression you’re not professional. Your website doesn’t have to be loaded with every bell and whistle, but it should be pleasing to the eye. My websites are nothing fancy, but they’re clean, readable, and easy to navigate.
Many web-hosting companies offer pre-designed web templates. While not a replacement for a good web designer, the templates help keep your text and graphics visually balanced. Best of all, you’ll never have to fiddle with finicky html code. You basically point and click where you want your web page elements to appear. BlueVoda (http://www.bluevoda.com) offers a point and click interface. Similar sites include GoDaddy (http://www.godaddy.com), and Register (http://www.register.com).
Last, but not least, when it comes to effective website lead generation, there’s one tool you must have: an email capture form. With this opt-in form on your site, you entice web visitors to sign up by offering a free incentive, such as an ezine, white paper or case study.
There are three major reasons why it is so important to capture your visitors email address:
1. Few web visitors take action the first time they arrive at your site. Often they’re still browsing for the right copywriter. You need to expose your “offer” six or seven times before a prospect takes action. With their email address, you can follow up with an ezine and expose them to your services multiple times – with their permission.
2. Publishing a white paper or ezine demonstrates your expertise to prospects. This builds their confidence in your abilities, which in turn makes them more likely to hire you.
3. You’re a high-ticket item. A copywriter’s services can cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars, plus a piece of the action in the form of royalties or a performance bonus. This can make for a very discriminating prospect. But when your ezine creates a rapport – and it should – it can melt away much of the natural resistance that comes from hiring an unknown and untested copywriter sight unseen.
Even when you do everything right, don’t expect a flood of prospects to immediately sign up. According to Marketing Sherpa, fewer than 10 percent of web visitors actually register for a white paper. But quality is more important than quantity. With proper promotion and persistence, you’ll be able to build prospect list in a relatively short time.
Finally, take time to plan your website – don’t rush into it out of some false sense of urgency. The need to create a steady income stream is often a very pressing and real one (trust me, I know!) – and the important of self-promotion shouldn’t be underestimated. But when you rush your website out to the world before it’s the best you can make it, it can do more harm than good. The best sites are like having an electronic business card, sales letter, resume, and portfolio case all rolled into one. Done poorly, it can kill your chances of landing a client. Done well, it can be the self-promotion tool that sets you apart from the competition. Take your time to do it right.
David Coyne is a copywriter who specializes in the business-to-business and health sectors.
http://www.b2bcopywriter.net
http://www.healthcopywriter.net
This article was first published by CopyProtege.com
The Freelance Copywriter’s Guide
To The Perfect Website
by David Coyne
To The Perfect Website
by David Coyne
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