When you think of copywriting do you think of those direct mail pieces that arrive in your mail box? Or do you think of the text of a television ad? Or do the words in a radio spot come to mind?

If so, you'd be right in all those instances. Yet you'd also have missed some.

At its essence, copywriting is persuasive writing. It is copy that encourages - compels, nudges - the reader to do something, usually to buy something. Although, in the context of website copywriting, for example, the copy could be there to persuade the reader to click on a link, fill out a form to request more information or to sign up for an electronic newsletter.

Copywriting can take the form of:

-direct mail pieces
-news releases
-television ads
-magazine ads
-Banner or text ads on websites
-newsletters, either online or off-
-sales flyers, etc.

While it persuades, copywriting always should be about the benefit of the product or service you are selling or the action are trying to get the reader to take (signing up for the newsletter will bring them good information about personal finance, for example). Businesses forget about this important fact often, trying to "sell" the reader by telling him or her about a product's/service's "features:" it has a turbo engine or it’s written by a Ph.D. in economics. So what? asks the reader.

Good copywriting answers that "so what?" before the reader asks it: "Its 300 horsepower turbo engine means you can go from 0 to 60 in 10 seconds." "My Ph.D. in economics means you can trust my financial advice."

There's a lot more to say about copywriting. I'm going to talk a bit more about the different forms of copywriting in my next few posts and I’ll focus on direct mail in my next one.

Now that you’re in the thick of your media campaign, don’t sit back and wait for the sales to come in. You still have plenty of work to do.

You have to monitor your results. You need to see which pages on your site are receiving the most visitors. Which ones are like Astroturf in the Sahara – they stand out and are getting tons of attention? Which ones are standing in the corner of the party alone, with no one to talk to? Are your site’s links working properly? Which of your media buys is giving you the best bang for your buck?

Then it will be time to tweak. You’ll want to give a thought to multivariate testing and see which components of which pages have the better content variation. Your split tests will help you determine if, for example, a “Buy It Now” button gets you more sales than a “Download Here” button (or vice versa). And if the “Buy It Now” is the clear winner, does the button do better if it’s at the top right of the web page or at the bottom middle?

Are some banners or ads performing better than others?  Are all your placements converting equally or are some pages / placements converting better?  If so, reallocate your budget to those however be sure you are confident that you have seen enough data to reliably make these decisions.

Do the monitoring and tweaking once, twice, three times. Then do it again. Keep doing it until your campaign is over.

And then you’ll look at your results. I’ll talk about that in my next post.

Going back to the second leg of your marketing stool -- tactics -- I want to talk here a bit about your media buying and planning. If you decide that a paid campaign, whether it be pay-per-click, ads in trade magazines, radio, television -- anything that costs you more than your time (article marketing and networking on social websites and forums are examples) -- you’ll need to get a clear view of your budget. More importantly, you'll want to get a clear vision of who your target market is and where they hang out.

Yet there’s a third step in creating your vision. This may the most important of all. You'll want to decide the what of your campaign, your objective. That is, do you want people to buy right now, today, this minute? Or are you looking at raising brand awareness. The first will result in a shorter, more intense media buying plan. The second takes a long-term view and you should expect  that results may not come quickly and this must be factored into renewal decisions that are solely based on ROI calculations.

For my next post, I'll talk about what you need to do before you purchase even one banner ad.

The article by Guy Masono I’ve referred to in the past describes the last two of the 4Ts as Transact and Track. I’m going to discuss in more detail what I believe these two mean for your marketing campaign.

Transact, Masono writes, “refers to opening a two-way communication with customers and prospects based on the nature of an inquiry.” For example, your website has a lead-generating form that visitors may fill out in order to receive more information about a product or service.

The “communication” results when you or one of your employees replies to that inquiry. How quickly do you respond? Do you respond with an automated e-mail reply? With a phone call? If you don’t hear back from the customer, do you respond again? If so, how? With another phone call? With more information sent via e-mail.

Follow-up is key. It really is more than key – it is critical. Do your salespeople know what your marketing department is doing so that they may respond appropriately when a marketing campaign begins? Does your fulfillment manager have the tools, systems and processes ready to get your customers the products they order when they order it. Have a link missing in this communication/sales/fulfillment chain and just watch the chaos – and lost sales – that result.

Which brings me to the final T of Masono’s article, Track. I’ve seen it too many times – a business owner or marketing department spends oodles of dough in marketing, but keeps track of nothing. Did the direct mail piece bring in the $1 million in sales over six months, or was that the pay-per-click campaign on Google? Or a combination? Or neither?  There are a number of tools out there to help you do this – some are free and some are available for a nominal cost.  If you don’t know how to set these up properly, I recommend hiring someone to help you with this as the costs of setting this up will far outweigh the benefits of saved marketing dollars that are being wasted on inefficient efforts.

Track your results today and you’ll know where best to spend your marketing dollars tomorrow.

Do you really know your target market? Do you know what they think? Where they live? How old they are? What websites they frequent? What keywords do they use when they search for something online?

If you don't - if you don't live and breath and think as your target market thinks - you must find out, because once you do, then you’ll know how to market to them.

You also will want to drill down and define exactly who your perfect customer is. Let's say, for example, you’re in the business loan industry. So when someone asks you who your target market is, do you just say "businesses who need loans?" I hope not – that's too broad.  It's amazing how many answers I get to this question as it relates to hosting.  In this case, the answer is often "anybody with a website."  Again this is too broad.

Instead, think niche. Are you looking for minority entrepreneurs? Women entrepreneurs? New business owners? Franchise owners? New franchise owners? A female who just bought a new franchise? Yes? Then just how old is this woman with a new franchise? Has she owned a franchise before? Is she the solo owner or is her husband or another partner involved in the business with her? You get the idea. Drill down to this woman's essence - you could write her biography if asked.

Hello again. It’s been a long while since I've posted here and I apologize for my absence. I'll be posting regularly from now on.

In my last post I talked a bit about the different strategies - tactics - one could use in an online campaign. Today I'm going to walk you through how to actually decide which strategies to use.

First, come up with a budget. Pay-per-click, banners, etc. are more expensive than article marketing or even a search engine optimized (SEO) news release campaign. You can allocate your funds across different tactics, both online and off. For example, SEO, pay-per-click, affiliate programs, blogging, some media buying can work very well with some offline stratgies such as trade shows, advertising in industry journals, participating in your local chamber's events, perhaps even some direct mail.

If you've had success with certain tactics in the past, focus on those; less so the new - at least at first. You do not want to spread your tactics - or your budget - too thinly. In fact, you could find lose focus and thus weakening your results. Few of us have exceptionally deep marketing pockets. Focus is key.

It’s a sad day when someone spends a good amount of money on marketing but has little budget for the follow through that’s necessary as your tactics bring results. You will need to have systems and processes in place to respond to queries and - happy day! - sales. You’ll also need to track each marketing tactic’s effectiveness. No need to keep paying for pay-per-click if you find most of your results are coming from article marketing - but you need to keep track of each part of your campaign to see which is bringing you the best results and adjust your budget allocation accordingly.