• Adjective: having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness or understanding; perceiving all things
• Noun: God

Wow, interesting message. Was this a “tongue in cheek” message or do they really think they know it all over their competition?

If you are writing the copy for an advertisement or any other marketing piece, besides using vocabulary that can be understood easily, there is a formula that you need to follow to get the best results:

• Captivate – get the attention of your Ideal Client
• Connect – appeal to them emotionally by understanding their issues and challenges
• Educate – build trust and credibility
• Motivate – give them a reason to take the next step in the process
• Move – get them to take some action

Writing copy that talks down to your audience may get their attention, but it certainly doesn’t connect with them or give them reason to do business with you. Having to look up a word in a dictionary certainly didn’t give me a warm and welcome impression of the company. I did learn what omniscient is although that’s not what is meant by educating the reader. How do you build trust and credibility when you are saying you know everything?

Writing needs to connect with your target audience. You get their attention if you write about something they care about. Whether it is a brochure, ad copy, blog post, article or whatever you are using to market your company, you need to make sure your writing speaks to them.

Once again I turn to Drew’s Marketing Minute for a great post about developing “personas” when you are writing your marketing materials.

The Marketing Lesson

Determine what really interests your audience and you will connect with your reader.

As a B2B marketer, it’s frustrating to try and pry prospect information from those visiting your Web site. Most people want to get something for nothing – a white paper, podcast, software – without giving something in return. I understand that mentality as I too, won’t sign up for something unless I’m very, very interested in purchasing the product or at least entertain a sales call. Plus I relish the day I find just what I’m looking for without having to part with my personal information.

However, it is our jobs to get that information. The following are tips on how to make your PPC landing pages more likely to capture this precious contact information:

• Use a landing page – Sending people to your home page is a waste of time in most cases. People click on your ad because they are looking for something specific and your landing page should only discuss what they are looking for.
• Keep it simple – Cluttered, overly long landing pages scare away a visitor. They don’t have time to read a lot of copy. If there are too many things to do on the page, they’ll get frustrated and leave.
• Match the landing page to the PPC ad – Generic landing pages used for all of your PPC ads is a waste (like sending visitors to your home page). Make sure your landing page matches the specific call to action you put into the ad itself.
• Make the call to action clear – If you are trying to collect contact information, make sure what you want the visitor to do is very simple and easy to find. Put the form where they can easily see it as soon as they get to the page.
• Encourage visitors to give you their information – Make sure your privacy policy is posted and visible. Also, if you are giving something away like a paper or free product, send the link to the fulfillment in an email rather than including it on the thank you page. At a minimum, you will get a valid email address.

Other sources of tips for developing a PPC campaign and its associated landing pages:

• Better B2B Landing Pages – A Case Study – Modern B2B Marketing Blog
• Six Elements for Effective Landing Pages – Marketing Pilgrim
• Matching Keywords to Landing Pages for PPC Pay Off – ECommerce-Guide.com

The topic of print verses online publishing is something that many marketing folks are pondering at the moment when it comes to spending their advertising dollars. For many of my technology clients, print advertising is not a factor. Most have embraced online advertising in some form and if we do a print ad, it is usually for a conference guide or some very targeted publication.

What is happening in the media industry for high technology is just the beginning. A post by Tony Hung, Print Publishing’s Death Knell?, points out some interesting facts about IDG Publishing’s revenue mix between online and print. IDG is a media company focusing on the IT industry. According to Colin Crawford’s post, The transformation of IDG, the absolute dollar growth of IDG’s online revenues now exceeds the decline in their print revenues. This change in their revenue mix and higher margins from the online businesses have resulted in them being more profitable than before. So it is no surprise that InfoWorld (an IDG publication) announced that it would be discontinuing its print publication in order to focus its efforts online. According to another post by Colin, since print is no longer the major product line at InfoWorld, closure of the 27 year print publication is a natural step in a plan that was put into place 2 years ago.

The future of print in the technology industry is transitioning. Other print publications already have disappeared or have been repurposed into online publications. More will follow suit. And truthfully, in an industry where change happens so quickly, I would prefer to get all of my information online.

But is this the case in all industries? If print advertising is part of your marketing strategy, it may be a good time to do an analysis of your industry and target market to determine whether a shift from print to online is happening and how you can distribute your advertising efforts to take advantage of this trend.