Should Freelance Writers Complete Free Test Articles?
As a freelance writer, I'm often asked to complete a test assignment. Sometimes companies offer compensation, sometimes they don't. Here's my answer to such a request, and why.
Why Freelance Writers Should NEVER Write a Free Test Article
Last week, I submitted an application to a company seeking a content writer. A friend passed the ad on to me, and the company looked interesting and well-established. The ad didn't say how much each article assignment would eventually pay, but the professional tone of the advertisement was encouraging. So too was the fact that I had impressive publishing credentials in exactly the space the potential client worked in - and magazine clips to submit on the exact topics he wanted someone to write for. It seemed like a slam-dunk, a home run.
The potential client responded within 24 hours. "Congratulations! You've made the first cut. You're among 25 writers we're considering for this vacancy."
You've narrowed it down to...25? Are you kidding me? Already I had that prickling feeling on the back of my neck that warns me a potentially bad situation is looming. But the next paragraph clinched it for me.
"In order for us to select the best writer, we require you to complete the attached questionnaire and submit two sample articles. Each article will be keyword-rich and 1,000 words. Submit your articles within 24 hours to us at..."
How long does it take a professional writer to research keywords and topics, then write a really solid 1,000 word article? I would say at least one hour per article. So essentially, this company wanted two free hours of work from each of their 25 potential writers. Then, and only then, would one lucky writer be chosen to work with them. And by the way, they still didn't mention how much they planned to pay.
So I emailed them back and politely let them know that while I would be willing to complete a test, my rate for completing such a test is X, and I accepted PayPal and bank check.
They seemed absolutely flummoxed by my response. I received another email back, letting me know that it was standard practice within their company to ask applicants to complete tests. Writers, designers, computer programmers, whoever was going to work with them, they wanted a lengthy test.
Now while I can see such a test for a full-time position, for freelance work it is absurd. It is especially absurd when you consider that I had submitted published magazine articles on the EXACT topic requested in their test article.
I declined to write the test, and explained my reasons to them in this manner.
"Would you ask a lawyer to prepare a free legal brief for you so that you can assess his skills? Ask a physician to commit two hours at no charge to you so that you can assess his surgical skills? Ask a dentist to install a free filling and a crown so you can test his skills? No. So why are you asking writers to give you two free hours of their time?"
Their only response was to tell me that this was their standard method of assessing freelancers and so far, no one had complained but me. Well, I have news for them. The reason they haven't heard complaints yet is because the better writers packed up their keyboards and went elsewhere.
The sad fact is that many writers probably DID complete their test assignments. What guarantee do we have that the company won't use the two free articles produced as part of the test? None. Just their word that they have given the same writing prompts to all 25 writers and therefore couldn't use the resulting articles. After all, no one would want to publish, let alone read, 25 articles on the same topic. Right? Well, maybe...
Now I am not saying that this particular firm intended to get free content. It has been my experience, however, that companies who want lengthy free consultations or to "hear your thoughts" on their pressing problem before they hire you as a consultant are hoping to get free work out of you. Why companies think it is okay to do this with consultants and creative freelancers, such as designers, writers, photographers and others, is beyond me, but we (the creative types) do seem to get hit with this more frequently than say, other white-collar professions.
As a freelance writer, my experience is simply this: the best companies I work with are the ones who paid me a fair rate for a simple test assignment. Many paid me to participate in short online training courses to learn the ropes for their particular clients or content platforms. They paid me for my time.
If you are a freelance writer and a company asks you to complete a big free project, ask yourself (and yes, ask them too) why. Why do they want a test assignment? Offer clips of your work, links to it online, or a short paragraph if they truly want to assess your writing skills.
But don't give your time and talents away for free. You're worth more than that.
No, freelance writers should not complete test articles at no charge.
This article was written by Jeanne Grunert, president of Seven Oaks Consulting, and "The Marketing Writer". Jeanne is a 20+ year veteran of countless meetings which could have been handled by phone calls or emails. Her experience includes leading marketing department, writing books and magazine articles, and pushing cats off of her desk. Jeanne does not write free test assignments but she's happy to give you a satisfaction guarantee on your first project with her. If you're not happy with her writing, you're free to cancel and go elsewhere with no hard feelings and not a penny owed to her. For more information, visit www.marketing-writer.com, Jeanne's website.
Five Things Your Freelance Writer Wants You to Know
These are the five things that the freelance writer you've hired would like you to know but is probably too shy to tell you.
- Provide clear project instructions: When you're working with a freelancer, time is money. Every moment spent working on your project is a moment not spent working on another paying gig. So please respect your freelance writer, graphic designer, web designer and other freelancer's time. Provide clear instructions, including expectations, deadlines, and background information, at the start of the project. Your freelance writer will thank you.
- Stop tweaking: Most freelance writers, myself included, are happy to make edits. We are not happy when you begin sending the same document back to us multiple times with different edits. If a word choice, phrase, or product detail was correct in version 1, it should be correct in version 3. At some point, you have to stop tweaking a document and, to paraphrase Frozen, let it go.
- Read every word: That said, read every word. Every. Single. Word. Read and double-check telephone numbers, email addresses, URLs, product SKUs and more. "But," you protest, "isn't that what I'm paying my writer to do?" Yes but your freelance writer is still a human being. Copywriters get tired, hungry, and interrupted a lot. Mistakes happen. You are the final approval person on any project, so check and double-check all of the copy that your freelance writer sends to you.
- Don't be surprised when your freelancer works for someone else. They aren't employees. They will write for other clients, oftentimes on the same topics. That's because freelance writers, marketing writers and other copywriters gain a reputation for writing about specific subjects, and as such, they're called upon by others to write on that topic. You wouldn't be shocked to find that the man painting your house is painting another house down the street, nor would you insist he sign an exclusive contract with you not to paint any other house on the block. By the same token, however, you do expect discretion; if he hears you discussing your medication on the telephone with your doctor, he shouldn't blab to the neighbors about it when he paints their house. Freelance writers should ALWAYS write unique copy for each client. They nearly always write for many clients in the same industry, but recycling text is a no-no. Expect freelancers to freelance...it's what we do. Otherwise, we'd be your employee. And you'd have to provide me with paid vacation and medical benefits.
- Pay promptly, and if paying by PayPal, absorb the fees. Unless you and your freelancer have agreed on specific net terms, payment is due upon completion of the project and receipt of the freelancer's invoice. Most freelancers struggle with an uneven cash flow, and they appreciate it when clients pay promptly. Another thing they really appreciate is clients who pay them the full amount by absorbing transaction fees in PayPal. Most freelance writers, myself included, accept payments via PayPal. I agree on my fees with clients as the NET amount I expect to receive. When they pay via PayPal and I am suddenly socked with PayPal fees, it's short-changing me. I always appreciate it when clients pay me the gross amount and absorb the fees on their end. It is thoughtful and considerate of their freelance writers.
Your freelance copywriter, marketing writer and other freelance professionals are part of your team. They may work from home with a cat draped across the keyboard or they make work parked at a table in the local library or coffee shop. No matter where they hang their shingle, they should be treated as professionals. Just as they treat your firm like a valued client, so too should you treat them like the valued team members they are.
If you are ready to hire a professional, experienced and diligent freelance writer, contact me today. I have over 25 years of experience as a writer and marketing manager. I specialize in long-form content for SEO projects, such as longer online articles, guides, papers and more. Visit Marketing-Writer Jeanne Grunert for details.
What Is Long Form Content and Why Does It Work?
I saw some fascinating research today on long form content. For those not in the marketing world, long form content refers to longer online articles and blog posts. Many people think that longer stuff doesn't work - that people skip over and don't read it. Research shows, however, that the opposite is true. Well-written long-form content gets two thumbs up from readers, especially business readers.
What Is Long Form Content?
Ask any two marketers what long form content is and you'll get two different answers. There's no industry standard definition. I'd put long form content at 1,000 words or more.
Long form content depends on several factors to make it work online:
- A broad enough topic so that you can get plenty of "meat" into the content;
- Great primary research. You can't fake good long form content.
- A solid outline. Like building a skyscraper, you need steel girders under it!
- Written to be formatted for the web. Because long form conveys a lot of information, the information needs to be written with formatting in mind. Plenty of white space, breaks, lists, subheadlines - you get the idea.
- Formatted for easy reading. You can't just plunk down thousands of words of text on a white web page and call it a day. Long form content has to be displayed for easy reading on mobile devices and screens. That means links, jump links, pictures and so on.
Why Does Long Form Content Work?
It works because it conveys information, plenty of information, and it gives readers tremendous value.
Wordstream offerred insights into why long form content works via several graphs. The interesting thing about long form content is that it increases reader engagement and time of visit, two important signals that Google and other search engines use to assess the value of website content. The longer people stay on your blog or site, the better. Long form accomplishes this admirably.
Why Don't More Companies Use Long Form Content?
Company owners have also bought into the myth that "people don't read anymore." My question to you is this: what people are you talking about? Do YOUR customers read?
Let's look at two of my niche areas: gardening and business. In both niches, people can and do read. They crave information. Gardening tends to rely a lot on pictures, but the business world? People love facts, figures, case studies, illustrations and more.
Long form is harder to write. If you're used to just dashing off any old thing for your blog or website, the idea of creating a 1,000+ article can be daunting. Most casual writers can't craft a solid outline, and they sure as heck can't create readable online copy. That's where long form content separates the men from the boys or in my case, the women from the girls; it's where the better writers excel, and the weaker ones flounder.
I love writing long form content and offer it as my area of specialty to interested business owners. If you're intrigued by the thought of adding some longer guides, articles and blog posts to your website but still uncertain whether or not they work in today's fast-paced world, check out the following articles:
- Forbes: Why Long Form Content Marketing Works and Why It Doesn't
- QuickSprout: How Content Length Affects Ranking and Conversion
- KISS Metrics: Why You Should Create Long Form Content (and How to Do It)
- Search Engine Watch: What Type of Content Should You Create
Retention and Loyalty Marketing Strategies
Today on my Blog Talk Radio Show, "Words That Work," I'll be speaking about retention and loyalty marketing strategies. In the world of direct marketing, there are three phases of direct marketing: acquisition, retention and loyalty building. I like to apply these concepts to the world of content marketing.
Most businesses spend a tremendous amount of time, money and attention to the acquisition phase of the business cycle. They emphasize bringing new customers and new business into the firm, and spend princely sums on wooing new customers in the door. The problem with that model is that eventually you do run out of new customers. Worse still, it's difficult to bring in new customers if you haven't put any emphasis on retention or loyalty-building strategies.
Your best marketing is conducted not by some fancy advertising or marketing agency, but by satisfied customers. Consider the following statistics, all gleaned from 7 Surprising Facts About Customer Referrals:
- 5% of new business comes from referrals – New York Times
- 92% of respondents trusted referrals from people they knew – Nielsen
- People are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend – Nielsen
Given these statistics, focusing on retention (keeping a customer for the long term) and loyalty (keeping long-time customers happy and eager to be your "brand advocates") makes good sense.
Encouraging Happy, Loyal Customers and Brand Advocates
Over the course of my 20+ year career as a marketing executive, I've found that the following 10 ideas and concepts will help any business grow their base of happy, loyal customers, customers who are eager to become your brand advocates. See if you can implement any of the following ideas:
- Reward existing customers first before offering deals to new customers: Satellite TV and cell phone companies are notoriously BAD at doing this. They offer great discounts to new customers but treat their existing customers badly, raising rates, hiking fees, and charging for every little thing. Instead of giving great discounts to your new customers, reward your longest and most loyal customers with surprise savings. Waive fees for them. Give them coupons, discounts, special gifts not available to your new customers. Let them know you value their loyalty.
- Surprise and delight your long-time customers: This is a corollary to item one, above. Surprise and delight your long-time customers. Waive a monthly service charge. Give them one thing free.
- Say thank you: This may sound corny, but in an age of fast-paced digital everything, an old fashioned, hand-written thank you note may really surprise and delight existing customers. This is especially good for service-based businesses. Let customers know you DO appreciate them.
- Ask for their opinions and ideas: Engage your long-time clients in customer panels, surveys and discussions. Call them and ask them what you can be doing better. They will be flattered and honored that you are asking for their opinion!
- Change only what's broken; don't change what you are doing right. You're obviously doing something right if you have customers loyal to your company for many months or years. Don't noodle around with what's working. You can add product or service extensions, but avoid the "new Coke" trap and don't mess with what's working. People DO like classic things and don't always crave the new!
- If you do add something new, offer it to your long-time clients first: If you do add a product or service, let the old timers know first. Make them feel like they are part of an inner circle of advocates by releasing new product information to them first.
- Go the extra mile: Set up a special hotline for your long-time clients. If they have a problem, prioritize your customer service by loyalty, giving special attention to customers who have been loyal to your company for a long time.
- Send a token gift: A small gift to say thank you may be appreciated by your customers.
- Share information freely with them: Add rich content to your website that continually strives to help your customers solve problems, learn new things, or interact with your brand. Make the content free. In the long run, you will reap new sales from existing customers that will more than pay off your investment in long-form, rich content.
- Integrity builds loyalty and trust: When all is said and done, it is professional integrity that builds loyalty and trust for your brand. All the free gifts in the world won't make up for a company that misses appointments or deadlines, sells products that break, or doesn't live up to its brand promise. Make your word and keep your word to build long-term loyalty.
This post was written by Jeanne Grunert, president of Seven Oaks Consulting and author of Pricing Your Services: 21 Tips for More Profit. Please feel free to share a link to this content via your favorite social media outlet. Thank you.
B2B Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition
I generally think of marketing in three phases: acquisition, retention and loyalty-building. Content marketers tend to focus on the tail end of that three-phrase cycle, loyalty building. B2B content marketing is ideal for building brand loyalty. Magazines, long-form content, case studies and similar content marketing strategies are often used to great effect by B2B marketers to boost loyalty. However, B2B content marketing for customer acquisition can be equally as effective if it’s done well.
Why Are Customers Looking for Your Products or Services?
All good marketing programs, including content marketing programs, begin by answering the question, “What do my customers want or need?”
People shop for products and services based upon needs. Those needs may be physical needs; you need milk for your cereal, so you go to the store to buy it. Needs may also be psychological. I made an appointment with my favorite hair salon a few weeks ago, and the first words out of my mouth to my stylist were, “Blonde me.” I needed a psychological “lift” for the new year, and my naturally ashy blond hair had turned dark brunette over the past year. An hour or two at the salon and I left with lighter hair and a lighter spirit. In that case, my needs were psychological.
Before crafting your content marketing programs, know what your customers want or need. Conduct surveys, listen to their comments on social media, visit with them, hang out with them, but do understand what they need. That understanding flows into the first segment of a three-step acquisition program.
Good B2B Content Marketing Begins with Education
Once you understand what your customers want or need, you can begin to think of how your products and services might fill that need. But don’t rush right into an advertising campaign disguised as content marketing. Instead, educate them first on how your products or services solve that need.
How do you educate customers via B2B content marketing? You have many choices:
- Educational content: This type of content tends to revolve around industry facts. Statistics, facts, data, product information are all forms of educational content marketing.
- How-to articles: Teach your customers how to tackle simple tasks that solve their problems and win their attention and loyalty. How to choose an accountant, how to tackle a computer-based task, how to do something smarter, better or faster are all great how to article types for B2B content marketing.
- Advice: I like using personal advice from an authority or expert to educate customers. This works best when your brand is already well-known or you have a strong ‘voice’ in the industry. I’ve used this successfully with manufacturing clients and those who have a very unique, specialized area of expertise. Customers are hungry for advice from a true ‘expert’ in their industry, especially industries where products are more prosaic and functional.
B2B Content Marketing as an Acquisition Funnel
All steps along your B2B content marketing program should act like a sales funnel, gently leading and guiding prospects to make that final decision to call, contact, or complete a sales action. Once you educate prospects, it’s time to introduce solution-focused content. Such content takes the educational information shared in step 1 and introduces your firm as a solution for whatever problem led them to your content in the first place. By helping, advising and guiding instead of hard-selling them on your product or service, you can share useful, actionable information without clubbing them over the head (figuratively, of course) emotionally with hyperbole charged rhetoric. Instead, you’re selling to professionals in a manner that appeals to them as business people.
Jeanne Grunert is the president of Seven Oaks Consulting, a content marketing writing and services firm based in Virginia. She hopes you found this article educational and informative.
Project Management Tips: What to Do When Deadlines Slip
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams
What to do when deadlines slip?
First, don't panic. Next, gather your information, take a deep breath, and get ready to do some quick thinking - and acting.
Love them or hate them, deadlines are a part of life. As a freelance content marketing writer, consultant and marketing teacher, deadlines are as much a part of my life as a cup of strong coffee in the morning; in other words, I need them to survive.
When you’re working with a group of people on a project, however, deadlines can be tricky to navigate. The larger the group, the more difficult it is to get everyone on the team to adhere to a schedule and meet deadlines. Even when the willingness is there, conflicting priorities, unexpected delays, and life events like someone coming down with the flu can derail the best project schedule and make deadlines impossible to meet.
What then? What to do when deadlines slip?
Here’s a short primer on what to do when you see a deadline slipping on a critical project. Of course, your reaction to the problem may change depending on how critical the project is, your role on the team, and whether or not someone else can fill the gap and help meet the deadline. Only you or your project manager can decide which of these methods will work for your project and team.
5 Project Planning Tips to Help Teams Meet Deadlines
- Make sure all parties understand the reasoning behind the deadlines: Many years ago, I was brought into a marketing agency as a consultant to help the agency understand why their direct mail pieces were being delivered after the offer expired on them. The client was justifiably angry that their mailings were a waste of money, since by the time customers received the offer, the coupons inside had expired. When I spoke with the creative and production departments, the issue wasn’t that they didn’t understand deadlines, it was that the mailing client itself didn’t understand the time requirements for direct mail. The coupon vendor was submitting projects without adequate time for the production team to meet the deadline; even by working around the clock to design and mail the coupon-filled envelopes, the way the United States mail works they couldn’t possibly get the coupons into the customers’ hands on time. By working with both the client and the account managers to help them understand the need for more flexible deadlines, the problem was solved. Make sure that your team members not only understand what the deadlines are but why they’re critical, especially when factors such as mailing times are completely out of your control.
- Allow adequate time for each project component to be completed: Another problem with meeting deadlines is under-estimating how long each task on a project plan will take. If you’re not sure, find out from previous project documentation or other team members how long this or a similar task took in the past. Then use that figure as your baseline.
- Build cushion time into a schedule: Always build more time than you think you need into a project schedule. A little cushion goes a long way to helping teams meet deadlines.
- Check on the progress of project milestones as well as the overall progress: One way to ensure that deadlines don’t slip is to check project milestone completion. Milestones, or small sub-goals leading to a larger goal, are a good way to ensure that projects stay on track. It is also helpful to spot issues in a project or individuals who may be over burdened and unable to complete their tasks in the future.
- Don’t over commit. The biggest flaw in any project plan is over committing people’s time. It’s a common flaw, especially among top performers. When someone is good at what they do, managers tend to fight for their time, which ends up overburdening them and over committing them to too many projects. Then deadlines begin to slip and projects fall behind. Spread the work out and be sure to check with other managers before scheduling someone’s time to ensure they have adequate time to work on your needs, too.
What to Do When Teams Miss Deadlines
When a deadline starts to slip and you noticed project milestones lagging behind, ask:
- Will more people working on it help?
- Can the project component be cut without sacrificing the quality of the project?
- Can you make up time in the schedule in other areas?
- Can the task be outsourced to someone else?
- Can the task be broken into smaller portions and handed off to several people?
- Does the person adequately understand the task itself?
Many years ago, my marketing department was working on a major marketing plan for a new product launch. Our advertising coordinator kept missing his deadlines on the project. It turned out that he was both over committed and unsure of his next steps on his deliverable. I worked with him to re-negotiate his work load and priorities, as well as to break down his task into smaller, more manageable milestones. Another team member, eager for a project to help her add to her resume for a potential promotion, asked to tackle a portion of the advertising work, so she was able to help, too. We were able to guide the project back on track and meet the deadlines with a little team work, quick thinking, and trust.
Such a scenario only works with the last item - trust. Your team members must trust you enough to ask for help or guidance when it is needed. They won’t come to you to tell you that they’re missing a deadline if they feel you’ll get angry with them or that help isn’t forthcoming. As a manager, earning your team’s trust comes from consistent management practices and a calm demeanor. When a project plan starts slipping, your team members will then feel confident enough to come to you to ask for help rather than hiding the fact that they might miss a deadline.
Online Marketing Trends
Today on the Words That Work podcast on Blog Talk Radio, we'll be discussing visual-based content marketing and storytelling: using photos, images, and videos to tell your brand story. Image-based content marketing remains a hot topic, and a good image-based marketing campaign can really boost your visibility, brand presence, and organic search engine optimization.
While researching a few facts for my show today, I came across a great article I wanted to share. Online Marketing Trend Are Moving Towards Visual Assets by Amber Alvi offers excellent insights and links to good content marketing resources. Find it on the Online Marketing Institute.
The podcast of today's "Words That Work" show will be available for all to listen to free at any time. Visit the Words That Work show page on Blog Talk Radio for more of my internet and content marketing related podcasts.
Boost Organic Search Traffic with These 3 SEO Basics
You can boost your organic search traffic with these tips.
Using only ethical, honest SEO basics and internet marketing tactics, you can help the search engines find, rank and share your content. The more they share your content, the better your chances of attracting new website visitors and turning casual visitors into loyal customers.
Three Ways to Boost Organic Search Traffic
Search engine optimization is the art and science of helping search engines find, rank, and serve your content to people searching the web for the best information on a given topic.
A search engine’s job is to find the best content online that fits what a given user types into their browser window – no more, no less. These automated robots scan the billions of pages of internet content available, indexing, archiving and serving web pages and all sorts of online content, including images and videos, based on what they can “see” online. What they “see” are words: only words. They can’t read a picture or video, so anything other than text must be tagged with words in order to be found online. (That’s why I emphasize “words that work” – because online, your words are working words. They must serve a purpose!)
So what are my top three SEO basics to boost organic search traffic? There are over 100 factors that search engine marketing experts believe go into a well-optimized web page. I’ve heard some experts claim there are 100, and others say there are 200! No one knows for sure, because the folks at the search engine companies don’t tell us exactly what goes into the algorithm or ranking formula that propels the little bots out into the world and helps them sort through everything from Aunt Gertrude’s bread pudding recipe to the President’s latest speech.
Marketing writers like me, as well as SEO companies and experts, look at the tweaks they make to web pages, analyze the data, and determine which factors helped boost page views, traffic and more. Then over time, they notice trends, and share those trends as SEO best practices.
Here are my top 3 SEO basics or best practices that your company should implement immediately to boost organic search traffic.
SEO Basics Tip 1: Keyword Phrases
- Research and update your keyword phrases: The topic of your content is represented by keywords or keyword phrases, groups of words that cluster together to give both search engines and readers an idea of what your web page is about. A well-chosen keyword phrase can do wonders to boost search engine traffic. What’s a well-chosen keyword phrase? It’s one that represents what’s on the page honestly and truthfully. It’s one that few companies have figured out yet. And it’s one that a lot of people are searching for.
It’s darned hard to find, that’s what it is.
Yes, finding the best keyword phrases for search engine optimization can take forever. Sometimes it takes months to find the best starting phrases for a new website. Don’t rush the process.
To find great keyword phrases for your own website content marketing needs, start with how people are finding your site now. Look at your online records; what keyword phrases are guiding people to your site now? Which content is performing the best? Focus on those phrases and run them through Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool or a paid tool. Look for over 1,000 searches per month as your first criteria; look at the competition next.
Keywords and keyword phrases are words that work. They’re my favorite SEO basic to focus on when I find an underperforming website that needs help, because often with a few tweaks in the on-page content, the back end tagging and the tags on images, I can boost traffic dramatically in a few weeks or months.
SEO Basics Tip 2: Inbound Link Strategies
- Add inbound links and linking strategies: Links, links and more links. Inbound links are links from other websites that send traffic to your site. They’re golden. They’re great. They give you amazing traffic if done correctly. But they must be added naturally and without artifice. The search engine gods are good at spotting artifice and artificial linking schemes, and they punish without mercy those seeking to manipulate their search engine rank through the use of such schemes. So don’t offer an “even swap” of links with a friend: “You point to my site, I’ll point to yours.” Such swaps, once standard fare among SEO companies, are now out of favor with the search engine gods. While you won’t get penalized, you won’t benefit, either.
What WILL get you in trouble are those paid linking schemes where you plunk down cash and a company spams the world with your links. Not only is that an obnoxious marketing tactic, it’s ineffective. It will also get you in trouble with the search engines. Don’t do it.
So how DO you build links into your website? The old-fashioned way: by producing well-written, rich content that tells a story while it sells. I don’t care whether you’re selling pain cans or traffic cones, with B2B content marketing, you need a story.
I’ve heard folks say that “busy business executives don’t have time to read long content” but that’s not true. They don’t have time to read USELESS content. To build inbound links, you need great content that provides useful information to a busy executive. Such content may get picked up by other news sources, social media link-sharing sites liked Stumbled Upon or Reddit, or shared via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other platforms. Once it is shared, the links multiply, and so does the traffic. But you must start with useful content.
SEO Linking Best Practices
Some best practices for encouraging inbound links to your website include:
- Offering facts that are hard to find elsewhere, or that few people know about in your industry. You can discover these facts through surveys, studies, and other methods. Distill them into digest-sized blog posts, papers and presentations that you share on your website, and post a prominent notice encouraging people to link to your site as the source. Perhaps you can conduct a study of how traffic cones are used, or the best color for traffic cones if you are a B2B manufacturer of traffic cones. Such a study, if done well, may be of interest to your primary customers such as law enforcement, municipalities, and more.
- Create guides and have them professionally written and designed. Make them into PDFs and offer them as downloads without making customers jump through hoops to obtain them. Sure, you want some content that requires a visitor to turn over their precious email address to build your list. But don’t make every download on your website contingent upon signing up for a list. Be generous. Content marketing is all about generosity, and generously shared, relevant and well-written content works wonders to increase your inbound links.
- Make a link-building strategy a long-term project. Links don’t happen overnight. It can take time to encourage inbound links. Work with a professional internet marketing agency or content marketer to create a strategy and tactical plan that aligns with other marketing channels and helps your business achieve its overall goals through a solid linking strategy.
SEO Basics Tip 3: Images
- Use your images to boost organic SEO: I mentioned earlier that search engines cannot read pictures. That’s true, but they can read file names, tags and descriptions of images that you upload to a server. One SEO best practice or SEO basic that many people neglect is using images as part of their search engine optimization. Rename your image files with keyword-rich titles that reflect the images but also boost traffic. Use the alt-tags to provide more words that work for search engines, and don’t forget to use any and all tags in the back end of your website to their full advantage. This includes meta keywords, which although not widely used today may still help, title tags, page descriptions, and anything else your system provides to help you tag, title and create keyword-rich data for search engines to grab onto.
These three SEO basics have helped both my clients’ websites and my own websites and blogs rise in the search engine ranks among some stiff competition. They can work for you, too. Try them yourself and see. If you’d like some help creating a strategy around SEO basics, please use the Contact Form on my website and schedule an appointment. We can discuss your website goals and needs, and I can provide you with a fair estimate for my work to help you. Let’s figure out how to make words work for you.
Three Reasons to Use Direct Mail Marketing
Direct mail isn’t dead, despite opinions to the contrary. Rather, it is undergoing a Renaissance. Many businesses are returning to direct mail marketing or incorporating it as part of an integrated marketing campaign, aligning it with digital marketing channels. Here are three great reasons to use direct mail.
1. Direct Mail Is Personal
Printing techniques have evolved to enable customization of direct mail that makes it both personal and targeted. Gone are the days of “dear occupant” letters. Instead, mailers can address letters to the recipient and even target the offer to the intended recipient, depending upon how the mailing list database is set up. Personal offers and appeals, even personalized gifts with purchase can be tested, measured, and used to boost response rates. Personalization is the number one reason why direct mail remains a popular marketing tactics.
2. Direct Mail Is Competitive
The U.S. Post Office shipped 79.5 billion pieces of advertising mail in 2012 compared to 103.5 billion in 2007, according to their website. Although that seems like a huge amount of mail, consider how many television, internet, radio and magazine ads customers are exposed to daily. They may receive two or three advertising pieces in any given day; chances are good that they will see 10, 20 or 30 times that many ads or more on other marketing channels.
With less direct mail arriving in the mailbox, businesses have a better opportunity of standing out with clever, attractively designed direct mail pieces. The International Journal of Research in Marketing published a paper in 2011 stating that direct mail creative design accounts for 10 to 25 percent of campaign success. (Feld, S., et al., The effects of mailing design characteristics on direct mail campaign performance, Intern. J. of Research in Marketing, 2012). Investing in professional creative design for your direct mail piece appears to boost open and response rates.
3. Direct Mail Is Effective
Direct mail remains a very effective form of direct response marketing. The Direct Marketing Association published a report in June 2012 stating that the response rate for direct mail is 4.4 percent compared to direct response email marketing, which achieves an average response rate of 0.12 percent. While it is true that the cost per piece or cost per contact for direct mail is higher than that of email, the return on investment may also be higher, depending upon the price point of what is being sold and the costs to produce the mailer. When all things are equal, direct mail continues to outperform email.
Direct Mail Remains Competitive for Certain Market Segments
Lastly, direct mail remains a strong marketing tactic to reach specific market segments. Wealthy consumers continue to respond to direct mail pieces, taking the time to read long form copy and respond to offers for luxury products. Niche markets, including hobby and special interest markets, respond well to well-targeted product offers, especially offers for products they cannot find easily in stores. With a good mailing list, expertly designed mail piece, and an appealing offer, direct mail continues to be an effective marketing channel.
Direct mail isn’t dead. It remains a viable, effective marketing channel for many businesses.
How to Get a Mailing List for Your Business
Many small business owners want to use direct mail as part of their marketing mix, but they're not sure how to get a mailing list. The best mailing lists are the ones the business itself owns, called house files. These lists, usually compiled from customers who have purchased products or services from the business in the past, are great to promote sales or new products to loyal customers. But what if you want to generate new sales and acquire new customers? You must rent a mailing list.
Lists Are Rented, Not Purchased (You Don't Own the List)
Lists are rented, not purchased. Many marketers and business owners talk about buying lists, but lists are usually rented for specific uses. They may be rented for one time use, which means that only one mailing can be sent to the addresses on the list, or they can be rented for unlimited use. Unlimited use is something of a misnomer, as there may be boundaries around the usage.
For example, depending on the fine print in the contract, unlimited use may mean that you can continue using the list for as long as you want to or it may mean that you can mail to the list as many times as you want to during a discrete time period, such as within one year.
What Is a List Broker?
Companies that rent lists are called list brokers. Using the analogy of renting an apartment, a list broker is like a real estate agent. If you were searching for a one bedroom apartment with a balcony, a real estate broker would generate a list of potential apartments in your price range for you to see. List brokers perform a similar function.
After learning about your mailing and possibly reviewing a sample mail piece, they may ask you questions about the target audience. They may want to know what you intend to sell, or more about the customers you'd like to reach. These questions help brokers narrow down the choices and provide you with the best possible lists for your needs.
Types of Direct Mail Lists
There are two basic types of direct mail lists. Compiled lists are the least expensive, but tend to be the least effective. Companies compile customer data and mailing addresses from public documents, such as telephone directories, to create lists based on zip codes. Usually, little or no data on the customers on the mailing list is available beyond basic census data.
Response List vs. Compiled Lists
Response lists usually perform better than compiled lists, but they are also more expensive to rent or lease. Response lists may be based upon lists of magazine subscribers, catalog purchasers, or people who have in the past responded to a direct mail offer. Many response lists offer renters additional data points for consideration, such as the last time customers purchased something, information on what they purchased and other facts.
These can help you target the best possible recipients for your direct mail offer.
When Was the List Cleaned?
Like an apartment, a list needs to be cleaned. List hygiene includes the last time the list was updated, the last time it was checked against the post office's change of address files, and whether or not it has been checked against the file of deceased persons. Such tasks can reduce the number of nixies, or returned direct mail pieces that are returned because they are undeliverable.
If the list broker cannot perform these tasks, a mailing house or printer who handles direct mail can typically provide the services or help you find a local vendor who can.
Removing bad addresses from the list saves postage, printing and mailing costs. It also enhances good will. Nobody likes getting mail addressed to a family member who died!
How to Choose the Best List
Be choosy about where you rent your mailing lists. Old mailing lists are not only more likely to be undeliverable, but they may also be beyond the original terms of the lease agreement. Direct mail companies do track the usage of their lists by using something called a seed file or seed addresses. These are a few addresses seeded or sprinkled throughout the list of employees or subcontractors of the mailing list owner who get a copy of every direct mail piece sent to the list file.
You can't tell at a glance who those people are; their addresses look like anyone else's. They will, however, check mail they receive against approved use of the list, and if a list is used outside the scope of an agreement, expect a bill in the mail from the list company.
Direct Mail Works
Renting mailing lists is an art and a science. It's always smart if this is your first time choosing a mailing list to speak with a professional direct marketer and seek their advice. Direct mail offers a powerful, measurable method of acquiring new customers. Direct mail may be an older market method, but it remains a vital and powerful one when used correctly.