Author Archives: Serge Saint-Prix

About Serge Saint-Prix

Hi there–my name is Serge Saint-Prix, and I’m a freelance copywriter who specializes in emails and autoresponders for the internet marketing niche. My unique writing style and talent for building a “bridge of trust” with prospects quickly established me as an in-demand specialty copywriter in the business. Follow me on

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What You Don’t Know About Copywriters Could Destroy Your Business …

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To me, it’s startling and sad to ponder how many businesspeople today use the words copywriters and copywriting, without really understanding what they mean. Good men and women sense that they have some sort of need in their enterprise, but they lack communication skills to find out exactly what their businesses require.

Successful CopywriterThe first thing that needs to be clarified is that a good copywriter is not just a writer. The profession of a writer is a very broad category that encompasses various skills. For example, there are writers who write books. These can be textbooks, fiction books, novels (adventures, romance, science fiction).

There are writers who write articles for magazines, from fashion to politics, economics, realities, and blogs. Again, each of those has their own required skills. A person can be a writer of music, whom we would call a composer. All these people are writers, but not copywriters. Copywriters fit into their own specialties.

Among the vast number of misunderstandings around the word, there are some people who think that “copywriter” means a writer who writes copyrights. That is, legal persons who help protect inventions against theft.

The best, sweet and simple definition of copywriting is, any writing that offers a product or service for sale. In any business, nothing happens unless there is a sale. No profit, no growth, no rewar

How can you find a Copywriter? 

ds. Sales is the center of all activities in a business organization. The dynamo of sales is copywriting. Even the sales force depends on this activity. The copy must first sell.

You will not find a copywriter by going to a university campus and signing up for a help wanted ad. You may make a request from a major job search organization, requiring a master’s in journalism from an Ivy league school, but you will not find your winning copywriter there. And your sales will reflect the lack of wisdom in your decision. In fact, a journalist has very specific skills for his trade, which is to investigate and report the news.

The greatest copywriter in history was David Ogilvy who was a farmer, a door to door salesman, and an apprentice chef. Is it possible to predict how good a copywriter is? The only way to answer this question is through the reflection of your sales. The money speaks louder than the resume.

Copywriters will be found to work for advertising agencies, for corporations, and freelance. Clearly, someone who has gotten a graduate degree in journalism will not have the required skills to be a copywriter. However, most newspapers, magazines, and television commercials will use agency copywriters.

The copy for this kind of industry is short, clever, even humorous. But it does not ask for a sale. Rather, it is to make you feel good.

So, what does a copywriter do?

The corporate copywriter, on the other hand, writes about the products or services of the company he works for. For example, if he works for a pharmaceutical company, he will write about a particular medication produced by this company.

His copy will contain a strong call to action. It is intended to sell the product.

The third category of writer will be the freelancer. They usually specialize in niches. They handle all areas of the copywriting or they specialize. He may write sales letters, SEO writing, white paper, all the copy in a website, newsletters, etc. Or, he can specialize in Autoresponder Email Sequence, as I do.

Direct-response copywriting is a kind of writing advertisement with a specific call to action that makes people open their wallets, checkbooks, credit cards, and buy right now. A copywriter is someone who writes advertising promotions. He is responsible for the text on brochures, websites, emails, advertisements, etc. It is everywhere – it’s a $2.3 trillion global industry.

Copy that sells

Two kinds of ad writing

We can distinguish two kinds of sell. The soft sell is the one we find in advertisement. For instance, most supermarkets have flyers that have pictures of the goods they sell with the price. But they do not have a specific call to action. Their objective is to inform us. It’s up to the shopper to decide if he wants the specific product or not. We have here an advertisement.

Certainly, a copywriter will write your sales promotion. Does it mean you’ll sell your products like crazy and in a month, make a couple of million dollars and live in an expensive house on the beach? No! Not by a long shot. In fact, it all depends upon your product, your market, and your marketing strategy. Regardless of how good your copywriter is, it all comes down to you.

How to Write a Sizzling Headline

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The most important part of a blog is the headline, also called the title of yourSizzling Headline article. You may have a fantastic idea that you want to share with the world, but if no one reads it, it will be lost for all eternity. Your headline is the most important phrase in your blog post.

A good title will grab and hold the attention of your readers. It will entice them into reading. The headline is the first thing that your visitor will see, therefore it is critical that it’s written in a way that motivates your prospect to click on it.

Not all headlines are the same. Creating one for a blog is different from a sales letter, or a newsletter, or magazine article. The audience is not only different but it’s intended for another objective. This is the common challenge that people who write their blog have: they have no idea on how to create a powerful, inviting headline.

One way to start by writing the title of your blog is by finding out what problems your audience has. Generally people have issues and they are looking for a solution. They may have a health problem, or want to know how to change the cartridge of their printer, or what is the most fuel efficient car.

You’ve got to write for both readers and spiders

Give to your reader the answer to their problems. Figure out what people are searching for. This is where keywords come into play. There are some who say you need to write for people and not the search engine. That is partially true. You should write to communicate ideas to other human beings. But, the spider which is a computer program, is the one who has to read your article and distribute it to an audience.

You want the search engine to send your blog post to the right audience. So write for both people and the search eSeagull - 350 -oNYuIIcngine. In trying to write a headline, you can investigate what is trending today. If your post addresses a trend, you can see what other writers say in their titles.

When you write a blog post, you really have two purposes. First of all, the most important for you, is to improve your website performance. You want traffic and convergence. And secondly, you want to give value to your readers so they perceive you as their savior.

You need to write the title of your blog in a clear and concise fashion. Don’t try to be clever. I have encountered many companies who want writers to write clever articles. That kind of thinking doesn’t fly among a very sophisticated audience, be it consumer or business.

The title of your blog post needs to exactly match a search engine query, be clear, and offer some benefits or promises. You could even include numbers such as “5 Linkedin Marketing “Tips” and “Tricks” or “3 Ways to …” It has been found that people prefer to read about something specific as opposed to an open-ended subject.

Consider this headline “Which Superhero Are You? PlayBuzz” and ask yourself if it is clear. By reading it, do you know what it’s all about? No. Does it offer a benefit? No. There is no such thing as a “Superhero”. You have problems in your life, you want a solution, and you have no tolerance for embellishment. This headline may be considered clever by some, but offers no promises.

When you write the title of your blog, your readers should know up-front what the article is all about. Include in it benefits, use “how to, why, 4 tips for… etc”. And finally, remember to include your keywords in the body of the article.

Video Marketing For Business – Best Way to Promote Your Business

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Video marketing is a strategy that few businesses have ever heard of, and even fewer take advantage of it. It is not about replacing sales letters, emails, or blog posting. Online videos offer another mode of communication. In the Bible, there is a quote I believe that says that there is nothing new under the sun.

Online Video B2BSix hundred years ago most people relied on visuals for their communication. Buildings were built to provide a message. For example, cathedrals were built with very high peaks to express man’s desire to reach the heavens. Castles gave a sense of power and protection. Statues were bringing biblical characters alive. Paintings communicate various scenes.

With the discovery of the printing press, the written word emerged as the form of communication. To a great extent, we still are in this stage. But also, in the second half of the twentieth century and twenty first century, our society is being drowned in the world of pictures to communicate messages. And this is where video marketing starts to shine.

New exciting way to show off your business

The Internet has revolutionized the way we do business. Even the way we communicate with our clients has changed compared to what it was 50 years ago. In all kind of industries, you will find from small to midsize to large companies, an attempt to capture the attention of their prospects. You can be do that with video marketing. It is a tool that ultimately persuade the viewer to action.

Online video marketing is on the rise and it’s proving itself to be a very effective way to communicatue with your prospects or clients. It is one of the most effective methods to talk to your prospective stakeholders and help them develop a better idea about your offerings. According to a research by Forrester Research videos were 50 times more likely to receive an organic first page ranking than traditional text pages.

Online Video MarketingAdvantage Of Online Video Marketing

You can use video marketing for various collaterals. For instance, you can develop a video as a sales letter to present your product or service. You can also have videos to explain how your product works. Tech companies use this method for their software programs. And you can use it for services. You can find videos that teach how to effectively use Clickbank.

You can build brand awareness by using video marketing. This kind of video would be close to the regular TV commercials, yet at a much, much lower cost. Do you have case studies of your products? You can put them in an ebook, or videos. It’s really about the audience. You give the audience the choice of media they prefer.

Beauty of video marketing

The beauty of video marketing, is that you don’t have to host them on your site. Doing that would consume a lot of bandwidth and would be expensive. But you can host your videos on YouTube. Are you taking advantage of them? No. You offer YouTube–which is owned by Google–content and in return they’ll give you traffic. Isn’t it wonderful?

As a business concern, you want to offer various materials to your visitors and clients. You offer online videos to advance the success of your business. With the average internet user watching videos on a daily basis, it only makes sense to add videos to your online marketing strategy. It is an excellent tool to generate interest and leads.

You might wonder how complicated is it? After all, you’re operating a business and you are not a Hollywood studio. A copywriter can help you and remove that kind of anxiety. Depending upon how a video is used and how it looks, you can have screencast or talking heads, motion graphics or even the new very hot hand animated videos.

Most people have learned of the need of search engine optimization in their copies, whether they write an article or post a blog. But very few know that in video marketing you need to optimize your video. Remember, Youtube is Google and it is the second biggest search engine tool. So you want them to find your videos. If you use a copywriter to write and direct the production of your video, make sure that he knows how to optimize your video.

Copywriter Tips For Making Your Product Irresistible

Copywriter Tips For Making Your Product IrresistibleThere are so many copywriter tips you can use in the promotion of your business, that you can feel overwhelmed. The reality is that you have to sell your products or services. In fact nothing happens until a sale is made. This means that all your concerns are geared towards selling, and this is the right strategy. However, do not confuse strategy with the tactical process.

The issue is, how do you get to your goal?  To do that, you will need to rethink your marketing approach. Stop thinking about your products or services. Instead start thinking of what goes through the mind of your prospects.

Your perspective needs to be a guide, a counselor. You are dealing with a human being who has needs and desires. In business-to-business, these come in two categories, business and personal wants. Your prospects are not interested in your products or services, they just want their satisfactions fulfilled. So the question for them is:  “What’s in it for me?” Or WIIFM. They have a problem and they are looking for a solution. Can you solve their issues?

The two sides of the marketing coin

Whatever the products or services you provide, there are two sides to deal with. These are the product features and benefits. Both go hand in hand. The one you will stress the most, will depend on your market target. These are critical copywriter tips.

As a general rule of thumb, if you’re selling to consumers, you will stress much more on the benefits than the features. For example, a car commercial may show the leather interior, or the electronic-computerized dashboard. These would be the features. Then, it will show the gentleman in tuxedo, with the gorgeous woman. That’s the benefit. The message, this car shows prestige.

If you’re selling to a business, they might be much more interested in features. For example, the greater capacity of the freezer, in case of a restaurant, the low energy consumption. These might be critical information for your prospect to make a decision. But the features imply benefits. In the example above, the volume of the freezer means more food can be preserved. Yes, but so what? Less spoilage. There is a process that’s taking place here. Your starting point is the feature, but there is a benefit attached to it. Consider these important aspects as you use those copywriter tips.

There are no features without benefits. This is where you begin to answer your prospect’s most important question, “What’s in it for me?” You show him the answer.

However, it’s not only one advantage that you’re giving him, but a multitude of them. In order to do that, you’ll need to dig deep into the benefit hole. Here, you transform critical features into core desires. This way, you become a guide to your client who will appreciate your concern for him and will reward you with the purchase of your products or services.

 

What is Content Marketing?

We hear the expression content marketing everywhere on the Internet. But it’s like a store of goodies. There is a world of divisions in there.  It encompasses social media, blog posts, newsletters, informational emails, articles, case study, etc. In fact, if you want to reach customers, you need content marketing.

The world is changing at an accelerated rate. What was true just a couple oWhat is Content Marketingf years ago, is no longer valid. According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

For some people, writing is fun. They sit in front of a computer and pound at the keyboard. They had written a fantastic article by the time they finished.

For others, writing is a drag, ideas come slowly, laboriously, and by the time they finished, they stare at the word count. They are observing that what they really wrote was so little.  They’ve been told that a blog post should be 800 to 1,000 words.

Clean writing solves this issue

Professional copywriters face this issue all the time in their writing. The question is, how long should their sales letter be? Usually, sales letters are long, very long. However, observe the great masterpiece of writing made by David Ogilvy about the Rolls-Royce. The copy was written on only half a page. Very few words, yet extremely powerful sales.

The fact is that your sales letter, like your blog post, should be long enough to say the essentials, but short enough to be interesting. This answer doesn’t seem profound on the surface, yet it encapsulates a world of wisdom. It all has to do with the intent of your piece.

One piece of writing would be need-to-know products, which would include information about the niche of your blog, such as food, auto parts, coffee, clothing, alternative medicine, etc.

Your prospects don’t need a long copy in this case because they need the products. To sell this kind of product, you’ll have to establish the product’s Unique Selling Proposition and make an irresistible offer.

How long should a blog post be?

Therefore the length of your blog has to do with what it is you want to accomplish. This was pointed out so eloquently in the Copyblogger, when the author says that “Good writers know how to craft long and short content, and they’ve mastered the art of knowing which one to use in every writing circumstance.”

There is no amount of words that should be assigned to a good blog post. The length of your article has to do with your reader and the intention behind your communication. The audience is crucial. David Ogilvy in his sales letter was trying to communicate with people who did not want economical cars. A Rolls-Royce is a car for those who are wealthy and have other cars, as well.

When dealing with readers interested in “how to” information, you may have to stir up a desire for the product. So your copy might need to be a little longer. This is where the intention behind your communication comes in.

If you’re writing a highly technical blog post, then it could be more than 1000 words. As Copyblogger rightly pointed out  “many long posts do very well online.”

Great content increase traffic

You can observe that companies who substantially invest in great content – like videos, blog posts, or case studies – experience 8 times more site traffic than companies who don’t. According to Forbes, the trends for success is up for content marketing in 2018.

It is not surprising to know that 4,500 B2B and B2C companies shared with HubSpot that the growth of their content was the number 1 priority. According to a study done by Forrester Research by 2019 digital marketing will spend a $103 Billion.

The well known and respected Content Marketing Institute points out that prominent organizations in the world like P&G, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and John Deere use content marketing. There is no better way to attract the attention of prospects and generate leads, as well as expand the customer base.

 

Business Coaching

Business coaching has increasingly become a necessity in the life of an enterprise. Any business, no matter whether it is a local one or nationwide or international, is faced with the reality of global economy. That implies a tough and rough competitive atmosphere. That, by itself is a challenging task. We live in a world economy where we see rising expectations of customers and indeed aggressive strategies of competitors.

Success in an organization becomes more and more difficult to achieve which is why business coaching is essential to the progress of a firm. With the right approach to coaching, a business can move from the most humble level to soar to the zenith of success. Business coaching can help an organization when it goes through changes in management or in business process re-engineering.

Business coaching will improve productivity

Business coaching can help in productivity and work quality development. Improved relationships allows the organization to smoothly progress. Obviously there is a connection between personal and business goals.  When thinking about business ideas it would be easy to assume that these ‘great ideas’ must come from a business guru, however that is not necessarily true. Often the obvious for one is not so for others.

When you consider business coaching keep in mind to never underestimate what you can learn for someone else. It is important not to be too judgmental toward the contribution of someone just because he or she does not fit a specific category. Each and every one of  us have different experience in life. We have traveled in different roads. So our experiences are always relevant.

Business coaching is inter-connected with the practice of networking and surrounding oneself with positive, like minded people. We have to grab opportunities to brainstorm different ideas. The idea is to find the good thoughts (the positive, encouraging and constructive) and emphasize those, while ignoring the negative chatter. These are the non-tangible aspects of a business organization assets.

Affiliate Email Marketing – Marketing Tactics

In affiliate email marketing, you carefully teach your market and gain their trust instead of just offering a product or a solution. If you are offering content, make sure it’s not promoting your product and you’re not pushing it to your internet market.

You need to provide value. As a marketer you’ll be put in the position  to educate your customers and prospects in order to help them make the right decision on the product or services that would be best for them..

Current affiliate email marketing trend is to educate your prospect whether they purchase a product or service or not.

Gaining your prospect’s trust will ensure they’ll return and will be ensuing their loyalty.  Just like there is brand loyalty with correct affiliate email marketing, you will gain your customers loyalty.

They’ll prefer buying from you then going to your competitor.

In order to gain new customers, marketers use SEO, PPC, email, newsletters. There is a comprehensive affiliate email marketing tactics that can be employed by many different people for increasing response effectiveness.

Various tools, technology based solutions can be found to insure the effectiveness of one campaign. 

Businesses need to generate inbound leads, a tactic used is cross selling.

Goals for your affiliate email marketing

In your affiliate email marketing campaign you should target your existing customers who might only have a limited knowledge of your product base and service. However, keep in mind that you also need new prospective customers as well.

You can develop a fresh list of customers by educating them about the unique features or components of your product or service. You can suggest to them different ways or things they can do with what you have to offer.

Letting your customers find out the potential of your product or service could really increase your clients ROI or help them run a better business

Helping both you existing customer base and new ones will maximize their profitability.

You should keep in touch with your customers, prospects a few times a week or at least on a monthly basis.

Follow-up emails are very important as well as good turnaround response to any inquires or questions.

When one has a comprehensive affiliate email marketing program encompassing multi avenues and media it will help increase your ROI.

Attention-getter personalized micro-email designed for recipient with a personalize message is a great tactic.

Modern technological advancement has paved the way for communicating with your list.

Multimedia strategies include partnering with others in the industry to bring an all around approach solution.

For example, you could acquire some freelance writers and graphic artist to create thought provoking promotion and successful affiliate email marketing campaigns

Since digital communications are on the rise consumers’ in-boxes become increasingly crowded, many marketers are looking at other means, in order to create an emotional response.

Copywriting Services – Various benefits

One of the most important aspects of having a successful online business is to have traffic. This would be generated through high quality content that you can get from copywriting services. A lot of content in your site means a strong web presence. As a business owner you may have a lot of good ideas about your products or services. Help for putting all this content in a consistence fashion on your site is available.

A Google search will quickly reveal that there are literally thousands of copywriting services available to use for your online business. However, you need to keep in mind that a good copywriter service will try to get to know your audience. It’s not all about writing and putting a lot of things in your site. It is about adding worthwhile, relevant content that offers value to your audience.

Copywriting services that businesses need

The important thing about copywriting services is to see if their interest is focused on what they can do for you or what benefits they can offer you.

You may not know how to present yourself to your target market in a manner that appeals to their intellect and emotions. Which is why your writer has to be able to fill the gap for you. First and foremost, copywriting is about selling.

Therefore, when you consider copywriting services, watch if the writer tries to go inside the heads of your target customers. The writing is not all about words in the web site, rather, it’s about persuading your prospect to own the product or service that you are offering. Crafting the copy has to speak to the demographics of your market.

When you look for copywriting services, try to see if they will also do SEO. Remember, a copywriter does not necessarily have to write according to the search engine optimization (SEO). That’s another kind of service, and it will cost you extra.

SEO Copywriter: What does an SEO Copywriter do exactly?

An SEO copywriter is someone who writers content in a web page that search engine optimized. You basically start by doing a keyword research which can be done on Google or other search tools. In this case the seo copywriter begins with a basic word and see if it is used often by people. If so, he’ll use it in a content on his web page.  SEO Copywriters have the talent to influence people with words in a way, which makes them seamless to search engines and communicate with web readers.

There are people who specializes as SEO copywriter. Put simply, he wins web traffic with carefully crafted words. The words he uses are keywords that fits into the content he’s writing. There are agencies who hire seo copywriters to work for their clients. They  specialize in the optimization part, producing keyword-rich content that has the primary purpose of pushing your page up the Google rankings. Ranking is about your position in the search engine.

SEO Copywriter helps the position of your page

The SEO copywriter creates web content embedded with search engine optimization strategy that brings your copy to a high SERP position. One has to be careful not to stuff keywords into the content. Once upon a time people used to do that. They used to put a keyword multiple number of times in a sentence to the point that it was not legible. Google became aware of it, and then discounted the value of this technique.

When an SEO copywriter writes content, it may be in a sales copy, or even in an article or a piece of information.  Often SEO marketing firms have in-house writing positions. In order to be successful, the SEO copywriter must first know where, how, and to whom he is addressing himself to. Who is he training to communicate to.

 

Website Copywriting

Having content is a necessity in order to succeed therefore you need to do website copywriting.  Many people have the tendencies to talk about the features of their products. That is alright. Features are an important aspects of the product or service you’re providing. Describing features in your website copywriting means presenting to your audience the characteristics of that product.

When you prospect for a product and you look at the specs, what you are doing is looking at the features of this product. In website copywriting, you certainly want to include these since it will describe your product to your reader. However, you will want also to include the benefits of the product. What the benefits means are the things that the product can do for you.

Website copywriting that sells

In your website copywriting, you have to tell your buyer what’s in it for him. A good example of benefits would be in the case of weight lost products. Talk about how it will allow someone to lose with in just a short amount of time. Often this is a bit strange to talk about because we are so used to just talk about features. If you know next-to-nothing about website copywriting, you will need a learning curve.

With some patience you can accomplish a tremendous work. Website copywriting is very different for other forms of writing. This is why in this article I am providing you with a good starting point to turn things around.  Doing website copywriting requires special skills that will make your web pages compelling to the reader. When you use powerful search engine optimization (SEO), then you can have a tremendous impact on your marketing.

Doing powerful website copywriting will be helped if you do a keyword research. This is an important step in your writing.  Whether or not you want to become an expert, it is a matter of personal choice. But you need to acquire a minimum amount of skills to be successful.