With the holiday sales season only 2 weeks away, now is the time to take a look at your advertising copy and give it a tweak.

To help you out I have outlined below seven sins of copywriting that you must avoid:

1. No compelling headline – how are you going to get people to buy when the first thing they see on the page isn’t inspiring? I would argue that your headline is the most important aspect of the copy on your page. The key is to tell the visitor exactly what you are offering while also making it appealing so they will read on (and ultimately purchase).

2. No attractive benefits – we’ve all heard the adage features vs. benefits. The features are what you, as the marketer, believe about the product but the benefits are really what the visitor wants to know about. They don’t care how your SEO service works, all they care is that it will get them in the top 10 search results.

3. No bullet points – these ties in with deadly sin number 2. Make spelling out the benefits of your product/service easy by using bullet points. This will make it easier for the visitor also. Here is an example of one of our ads. It shows how easy it is for the visitor to see what the product will do for them by using bullet points.

4. Sentences too long – I have to admit this is one of my biggest challenges in writing copy. But the trick is to know when to end a sentence and start a new one. Here is what I was taught: read the sentence out loud and as soon as you run out of breath, that’s when the sentence needs to stop.

5. Hard to understand jargon – This is probably the most common sin in copywriting. But just remember that not everyone who is looking for your product is as educated as you about the product. Spell out the product in layman’s term. However, don’t talk down to them or assume they know your industry language and terminology.

6. Spelling/grammar mistakes – this is the easiest sin to avoid. Don’t assume that a common spelling/grammar checker is going to pick up all the mistakes. Read back over your copy carefully or give it to someone else to check who hasn’t seen it before (fresh eyes).

7. No break in ad copy – Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. How daunting would it be to visit a website and find a page full of text? To be honest I would probably click away. People don’t have time or the patience to read through such a large amount of text (not to mention it would look pretty ugly). Use relevant images to break up the text such as a call to action button or an image of your product.

Are there any additional sins you would add to this list? If so feel free to share them below.

However, the analytics capability of for Facebook is pretty limited. So marketers spending all this money on facebook have very little insight into how their fan pages are performing.
Earlier this week I saw a tweet (message on twitter) with a link to Google Analytics hack for measuring facebook fan pages. We tried this hack but it had too many bugs and after wasting 2 hours we gave up on that solution.

As we were struggling with the GA hack, I got an email from Webtrends announcing their Facebook Measurement Capability. So I guess that is going to be our solution for measuring Facebook fan pages and custom apps but I will have to wait and see if it will live up to the expectations.

Here are some screenshots of Webtrends Facebook measurement reports

Here is a press release from WebTrends

“The ability to have concrete measurement on investments within Facebook and compare them apples to apples with other digital channels is critical to marketers,” said Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, vice president of marketing, Webtrends. “Our comprehensive approach to measuring Facebook, beyond just applications, allows marketers to understand the broader picture of how their Facebook investment is performing.”

Webtrends can now show you how your tabs, apps, and share features are working.

A few examples are:

• Twitter activity driving to Facebook Fan pages
• Facebook Fan page activity overlaid with corporate blog posts
• Conversion performance if they happen in Facebook
• Custom applications, Facebook page tabs, and Facebook ad click performance

Webtrends believes Facebook is one of the key social channels for brands to invest in and these capabilities will help them validate those investments.

Webtrends Analytics for Facebook
Webtrends’ new Facebook measurement capabilities utilize Webtrends Analytics 9, which combines our powerful real-time analytics engine with its best-in-class user interface. For the first time, marketers can view their Facebook measurement alongside other digital marketing investments such as websites, microsites, blogs, mobile apps, and more. Additionally, using Analytics 9’s RSS overlay capabilities, marketers can easily see the impact of promotional efforts. Tracking custom tabs, applications, and sharing provides the most complete measurement of Facebook available in the market.

How Webtrends Analytics Collects Data on Custom Tabs
Custom tabs and applications have critical differences for data collection, due to Facebook’s Terms of Service and its commitment to user privacy.

• Brands can’t use traditional analytics methods for tracking custom tabs because Facebook does not allow Javascript, and they aggressively cache images.
• To overcome these limitations, Webtrends developed a new method that uses their data collection API to bring Facebook data into Webtrends Analytics.
• In addition to tracking tab views, Webtrends can also measure:
• Tab views segmented by fans and non-fans
• Clicks on buttons and links, such as the Share button and its options

How Webtrends Analytics Collects Data on Facebook Applications

• Applications allow more tracking options both because they allow Javascript and because the Facebook’s Terms of Service allows for collection of user level data.
• Webtrends utilizes their Data Collection API to bring Facebook data into Webtrends Analytics.
• Webtrends can measure any type of application built on the Facebook platform.

The Great Data Giveaway – A Demonstration of Webtrends’ Facebook Measurement Capabilities
To demonstrate their new capabilities, Webtrends created a prototype Facebook campaign called The Great Data Giveaway. Webtrends is using this campaign as a model for their customers’ reference.

“Marketers are wrestling with how to earn and prove ROI from social media marketing,” said Kaykas-Wolff. “We designed The Great Data Giveaway to not only demonstrate our new capabilities in action, but to also show marketers that social channels like Facebook can generate qualified leads.”

The campaign is a drawing for prizes that appeal to Webtrends’ target market, which are data prizes like ReadWriteWeb premium reports and InfoChimps’ Twitter Census Data.

1. Webtrends created an application and placed it on a custom tab on Facebook to explain the contest details. KPIs: views segmented by fans and non-fans.
2. The user becomes a fan first (known as a “fan-gate”), then allows the installation of the app in compliance with Facebook’s Terms of Service. KPIs: Rate of fan interest, number of installs.
3. Once the app is installed, the user can enter the contest via a form driven by our Eloqua marketing automation system. KPIs: Entries, follow-up email opens, follow-up email conversions.
4. The app allows users to post the contest info to their wall. KPIs: Number of shares.
5. Webtrends marketing provides air-cover for the contest by mentioning it on Twitter and in blogs. KPIs: RSS overlay of promotion efforts on views (tab) and visits (application).

“We are so proactive in talking about Facebook measurement because it’s a critical area of growth for our customers. The new capabilities we have developed were shown at our recent user conference, Engage 2010, earlier this month, and we have several implementations underway,” said Kaykas-Wolff. “To meet their needs and keep up with the rate of change in this space, we have a series of capabilities we’re adding to Webtrends Analytics that will be released in the near term and ongoing basis.”

Webtrends Analytics 9 for Facebook Webinar
Webtrends will also host a Webinar in April discussing how companies can take advantage of Facebook measurement in Webtrends Analytics 9. For more information including registration, date and time, please visit us here.

Comments

Now what if I said they’re all irrelevant? What if I said you don’t need sales to be successful? You’d probably say (fairly sarcastically), “Why not just hand my business over to my competitors while I’m at it?”. And you’d be right – if I were serious.

Of course PR, marketing, advertising and sales are relevant, and hugely important parts of your business. But they’re not the most important part.

“But they’re the ones that bring the customers and make money, and money equals profits!” you might say. And again, you’d be right. But take a look at that sentence again.

“Customers… make money and money equals profits.”

That’s both sets of customers, new and existing. So why are so many businesses concentrating on the new and forgetting about the existing? Is the mindset, “Well, they’ve stuck with us so far, they must be happy”? If it is, be prepared for a wake-up call.

Just because a customer has stuck with you doesn’t mean they’re satisfied. They may be tied into a contract or they may feel it’s too much effort at the minute to find a new vendor. But satisfied? Not necessarily.

Have you asked them lately how they’re feeling? Have you asked how you can improve your service (don’t fall into the trap that your service has reached its plateau – nobody’s that good)? You do have ways of asking these questions, don’t you? If you’re not sure, ask yourself the following:

• Do you have a customer feedback form on your website?
• Do you have a proactive approach at asking your customers what they’re thinking?
• Do you collect your customer details and use that information to personalize your relationship?
• Do you have some form of customer service performance in place?

If you can’t answer “Yes” to at least one of these questions, you might want to check and see how many of your customers have dropped off the radar in the last 3-6 months.

As important as your sales team is, or your marketing team, or your PR team or your advertising team – as important as all these elements are to your business’s success, they all cost money.

Your customers, on the other hand? A happy customer is your sales, PR, marketing and advertising teams rolled into one. Your most loyal employee. Your most vocal supporter – and they don’t take wages from you. So look after them.

Be Pro-Active

If you collect contact information, use it. Call your customer up and ask how they’re finding their time with you. Ask how you can improve and what you can do to make their lives easier when shopping with you.

Don’t collect information initially? Fine – have a feedback form on your site and have that (or a customer feedback phone number) printed on your receipt. Encourage interaction and communication.

Or, if you have a Twitter account, have “Don’t forget to tweet about us on Twitter” printed on your receipt and then monitor your mentions. And this works both ways – you can salvage a negative impression immediately or emphasize a positive one.

Start a forum on your website where customers can chat with each other about how you’re doing, and how you can improve. Involve your employees throughout the company on the forum, and talk to your customers like human beings instead of just sales figures. Sure, you can advise on what employee can say what, but at least offer the voice to open up to and converse with.

The key thing is, sales and marketing and the rest of the new business team is exactly that – new business. And you 100% need that. But you also need existing business to build on and let you have the means to go after the new. Your customers – and by association, your customer service – are the real profit makers.

Isn’t it about time you treated them accordingly?

Comments

Consider the recent example of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, whose digital doppelganger created false identities spanning a range of social media sites and even claimed he had been diagnosed with skin cancer. ESPN advised in its NFL Rumor Central, “Not real, folks. In fact, if you see an athlete with a Twitter, you should assume — at least at first — that it’s fake. Assume it’s a Twitter twerp.”

What happens to celebrities happens to brands too. Identity hijacking is prevalent in social media largely because it’s easy to set up accounts and find an audience. The potential for the reach is enough of a lure. When I recently asked Facebook’s Chris Pan who Facebook’s audience is, he said something to the effect of, “Pretty soon it’ll be everyone.” He’s not that far off.

Major brands have increasing recourses in taking charge of their social identities online. If you’re in this elite group, you have a shot at pleading your case to sympathetic ears at various digital properties. MySpace has always restricted brand pages to paying marketers, Facebook is now aggressively cracking down on branded Pages not owned by someone affiliated with the brand, and Twitter will often turn over parked accounts to the rightful tweeter upon request.

Still, this strategy doesn’t solve two issues. One is that a reactive approach could occur after squatters have already damaged a marketer or brand. The other is that for the vast majority of businesses and brands, there’s no clear rightful owner. For instance, when I think of Sal’s Pizza, it’s the Sal’s Pizza on Mamaroneck Avenue in Mamaroneck, N.Y., with the best Sicilian slices I’ve ever eaten. But there are Sal’s Pizzas in Dallas, Boston, New Holland, Pa., and Little Neck, N.Y.; the last one even owns  myspace.com/salspizza. On Twitter,  @salspizza belongs to a restaurateur in Limerick, Ireland. I know the real Sal’s isn’t in Ireland – come on! – but it would be hard for Mamaroneck’s Sal to make a case, no matter how many of my old high school buddies sign a petition.

So, what’s a marketer to do? Here are ten steps to follow:

1) Run an audit of where your brands are. Note the usernames you use. If you have one flagship brand that’s also your company name, then it’s easy. If you have a stable of brands, this could be a long list.

2) Prioritize the usernames. In the Sal’s example, the business may be Sal’s Ristorante but it’s known as Sal’s Pizza, so salspizza (which is also easier to spell and type) would be the preferred name.

3) Use a site such as usernamecheck.com or knowem.com to enter see if your usernames are taken across scores of sites. Also check for other brand terms. Prioritize usernames that are both memorable and widely available — that’s the sweet spot.

4) For any sites that you know are priorities, register your key usernames. If you’re not sure which sites to prioritize, start with the ones you’ve heard of.

5) Eliminate any sites that are only for consumers and are off-limits for marketers or brands. For this and the next steps, call on the most social-media-savvy person you know, ideally someone you work with closely in your company, at an agency, or elsewhere.

6) Now you need to review all the other sites and prioritize further. If you’re at a total loss, use Compete or Quantcast’s free tools to see how much traffic the sites get, and pick a threshold. 7) For any of these sites, if you don’t plan on using them right away, fill in the minimal information required, post a link back to your homepage or the hub of your social marketing program, and adjust the privacy settings (where possible) so that’s they’re visible to the smallest audience. You don’t want to set false expectations for engaging consumers, and you don’t want to publicize a brand presence that falls short of your standards.

Check where competitors are. One easy way to do so is look for their most obvious usernames and visit those accounts to see if they’re really competitors or squatters. If you can’t find much, run some basic searches. Consider whether it’s worth joining competitors on those sites if you haven’t signed up already.

9) Share the list of registered usernames and passwords with a few trusted colleagues so you’re not the only one with the information.

10) Don’t be a jerk. You’ll find opportunities to undermine competitors throughout this process. Be one of the good guys. Try believing in karma.

Ideally, marketers will have clear-cut strategies for where they want to be and how they’ll develop their digital and social brand identities. But there are two problems with this approach. First, for many marketers, that’s just not the case. Second, if marketers think too hard about their strategy, they may never get around to covering some of the basic steps. If you don’t have a Twitter strategy, for instance, go ahead and register the most relevant usernames you can, make the profiles private, and then return to them when you know what you’re doing.

People will still impersonate celebrities and brands. It’s a price to pay for popularity, or notoriety if that’s the case. But if you’re in these arenas for real, it takes a lot of the fun off others trying to claim they’re you.

Comments

On the Google Analytics Blog, Benjamin Mangold wrote, “It’s important that you tag your email campaigns with campaign tags so that you can track how well each email performs.” Using tags connected to campaign names, campaign sources, campaign mediums, campaign content, and campaign terms, you can see exactly what sort of stuff is convincing people to click.

As for how to create such tags, consistency is key (no Company_Name vs. company-name vs. Company+Name, for example), and Mangold explained, “The Google Analytics URL Builder is a great tool for generating tagged links to use within your email campaigns.”

Mangold then noted that time-pressed people might want to try Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, VerticalResponse, and AWeber, too, for their ability to automatically apply Google Analytics campaign tags.

Hopefully these ideas will help you conduct your email marketing in a more efficient manner. Email’s a cheap and easy way to reach people, so this is an area that definitely deserves companies’ attention given the economic climate.