I recall some website writing I did for this one company. They advertised on Google adwords, and had a budget of $2 a day. For their business, that meant 2 clicks. Two whole clicks a day, and they were done. And they complained after 3 days that my writing wasn’t bringing in business… well, it’s kinda hard to judge from a whopping 6 visits (to be fair, I didn’t know their PPC budget when starting the job – I just assumed they would deliver eyeballs.)
I told them they had to get more “interested” people to the site. So they changed their keywords, and made it so their $2 budget would bring in 10 people a day. No effect – now the problem was the keywords were awful. Yea, they were cheap keywords… and they were useless. The client actually expected the web copy I wrote him to “make up” for the fact that the leads were lousy. That’s not going to happen.
On the internet, you have to have quality visitors. Period. You need people who want what you do.
You can’t fool around on the fringes with your Pay Per Click keywords. The fringes are great for filling out your marketing, but you cannot expect copy to make up for bad leads. If you are a local carpet cleaner, you need to have “{your city} carpet cleaning” as a keyphrase. I don’t care how much it costs. If you design websites for florists, you need to have “web design for florists” as a keyphrase. You can’t omit these in favor of, say, “flower seller internet design” because the latter is cheaper. You won’t get the same quality visitor.
It’s this simple: No writing, no expensive design, no nothing will help you until your site is visited by people who want/need what you have/do. I can write the best copy in the world – but even with that, if you sell shoes and you get visited by people who really aren’t interested in shoes, well, there’s not going to be many sales made.
Great web copy can work magic with the right visitors. I prove it every single day. Give me people who are interested in your product and service, and I’ll sell them. It’s what I do. But you do have to deliver those eyeballs.
Hi Dan,
When I get warn leads coming through to me via email, my only intention is to get a response, as I have a high ratio of non responders that lead nowhere.
What is your best tactic to achieve a higher reply ratio with emails.
Lee
Hi Lee,
Wow, if I only knew the answer to that one. 🙂
Usually, I try and end the e-mail with a question that requires an answer. In other words, if someone asks for a quote and they give me sufficient information for the quote, I’ll send my quote, but also find “something” to ask about at the end of the e-mail. Perhaps something like “is this writing for the current website, or are you having a new one developed? If the latter, can I see the new design?”
This doesn’t always work, obviously. Sometimes, my price was too high and I never hear from them again. Sometimes, they just cooled to the project for whatever reason. I’d say if you’re getting *half* of your leads to reply back, you’re doing decent.
I am responding to many business cards I got at a trade show and it is tricky. I don’t want to divulge them with too much information, then finish off the email with an open ended question like “what products are you interested in?” I prefer to just say “Attached is our catalog as requested… May I ask you, what was your favorite product?”
We’ll see how it works.