Small businesses have distinct advantages that larger businesses may have sacrificed as they grew. Small businesses also have unique challenges. A major example is marketing. Ad copywriting, web content and maximizing relations with customers are all have higher stakes for a small business. Keep your smaller customer base and dependence on good reputation always firmly in mind, and focus on good copywriting wherever and however, your business makes its presence known. You have some choices on how to achieve this, as we will see below.
You Have a Smaller Consumer Base:
Big businesses have more clients – this is pretty much axiomatic. If you had a huge customer base, you would probably be classified as a big business. However, your modest size can offer you a better chance to connect and connect consistently with your clients in a way that a huge company would find challenging. You can and should focus on the quality of your client relationships since you have a smaller quantity to manage. You will take the greatest advantage of this phenomenon if you stay on top of these relationships. Engaging your clients, building their trust, and keeping them engaged, will build and maintain long term relationships with the customers you have.
How do you do this? If you are not dealing with your customer’s door to door, or literally stopping them on the street, your avenue of communication is through words – or, in the jargon of advertising, copy. Every word you print or post in communicating with your customers is a copy. Every word that appears associated with your name should contribute to the goal of connecting with customers for the long term. This means every word, from a glossy multicolor ad to the text in your order form, is a copy, and needs to be effective. So…Why is the wording of even your subsidiary informational material, your listing of services, your ‘contact us’ forms, and ‘shopping basket’ pages so crucial?
Word of Mouth is Vital for Small Business Marketing:
All this copy is critical because it touches not merely the reader, but every one the reader discusses positively with others fails to mention to other potential users, or, worst of all, chooses to criticize. As a small business owner or marketing manager, unless you are robbing banks on your lunch hour, you will have a modest budget for promotion and advertising. To ensure that you are most effective in using your resources for promotion, you need to optimize every tool that is available to you. This includes print, for those who still use that expensive medium, as well as the huge universe of online marketing. Copy appearing in both of these venues can if generated thoughtfully, generate a different but vastly more valuable type of promotion: word of mouth. This is why you need to keep your eyes on the quality of every bit of the copywriting that carries your business name or your own name. It needs to be distinguishable from what else is on the web. It needs to be compelling to your readers. It needs to be above reproach in terms of correctness. What does this mean? It means that every bit of copy should be original and created for your business. Your copy should be vivid and lively, to stand out from what other similar businesses put out there. It needs to be able to propel your readers to action. Finally, it needs to be attractive and informative enough for your readers to be moved to share it. If your copywriting can motivate your readers to discuss it positively with others, you will have tapped into that powerful and essentially free channel for marketing: word of mouth. More marketing can translate into more committed clients. That’s the goal for a business of any size.
Quality Copy Levels the Field
Can you do this on your own? Yes, if you are willing to devote some time and energy to the effort. Copywriting is not like simply writing, whether it is a whole e-book on your specialty, or merely the confirmation of mailing address page. You need to articulate what you need for your customers to know, and then translate that information into something that is concise, compelling, and entirely correct. You have to be brief because you may have literally a fraction of a second to get your readers’ attention before they click onwards to some other business’ webpage. You have to be compelling because you want your readers to stick around, remember, and share what they read with their colleagues, friends, neighbors, and social media contacts. You have to be correct factually and grammatically. The reasons for needing to be factually precise should be easy to understand; customers do not appreciate being fibbed to. The reasons for needing to be utterly spot-on in terms of word use and grammar are perhaps not as obvious. Be warned, however; if your copy is sloppy grammatically, your customers will notice. Even non-native speakers will find it irritating, even if they cannot immediately bring to mind what you have done wrong. This kind of error sends a subliminal signal that you don’t care enough about your readers to at least proof-read.
So – look at some samples from proven masters of the craft. This means possibly ignoring your immediate competitors, who may or may not be using good copywriting practices. You should familiarize yourself with the work and approach of people who are wordsmiths. Then, try to re-work your own information so that it has punch and crispness. Don’t depend on your own ‘ear’ to get your copyright. Get the help of others to read and listen to your copywriting. If you are not a native speaker, this is particularly important. You can also find help from editors who can sharpen up your text swiftly and efficiently. Using such professional help a few times and comparing what you sent them and what they submitted back to you can be highly instructional. Look at how your editor changed your original draft. Can you do the same? If not, fortunately, such help is always readily available, and relatively modest in price. It may take some repeated iterations to get into the habit of conveying the information about your firm in a few words, all carefully chosen, as possible.
If you have invested your energy well, you could be done – finished – depending on a professional copywriter. To see whether your strategy has worked, whether it involves writing everything yourself and proofing and editing your own material based on your colleagues’ feedback, or getting some support via editing freelancers, check out the big firms. Compare your copy to the copy on a blockbuster firm’s webpage, something in the Fortune 500, perhaps. There should be virtually no difference in quality. Effective copywriting, concise, compelling, and correct, is a relatively inexpensive tool for marketing.
Pay attention to all your copy, in all the places where your name appears to the public. If you make sure that all of it engages and moves your readers to share good opinions about your business, you will maximize your expenditures of resources on marketing.