by Alexa Clark I had the opportunity to chat with Mitch Joel, President of Twist Image, at the recent eMetrics conference in Toronto. His presentation was on Twitter, Micro Conversations…
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One of my biggest pet peeves is what I call “blah blah blah" marketing copy. Here’s an example:
“XYZ provides the ideal combination of advanced technology and expertise to information providers. Our solutions and services lower costs, streamline operations, create efficiencies and generate new revenue for our customers. Our mission is to unlock the true potential of your market and partner with you in growth."
Logically I know I was reading a description of what XZY company does, emotionally all I heard was “Blah Blah Blah”. I had no idea what this company did. None!
Be honest – you’ve done it too right? Read something and had absolutely no idea what the product was or why you might benefit from buying it. You’re probably like most of us, who don’t admit this for fear of looking dumb or uninformed.
Many marketing people I know find it easy to pump out words – they can jump right up and start writing, often on their first day on the job or project. Their words flow onto the page, looping into just the right sized paragraphs. Paragraphs which usually contain an abundance of the latest buzz words.
These words turn into product brochures, web sites, press releases, white papers and blog posts, and prolific marketing writers are praised for their ability to “produce” and “deliver”. They measure their clicks and downloads and honestly believe they’ve done well.
I beg to differ.
In 1868, writer Mark Twain said
“Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”
In an age where attention spans are shrinking, and 140 character sound bites are all you are allowed on marketing vehicles like Twitter, it is once again time for writing less to become a valued marketing skill.
Writing less actually requires more work, not less, but here are 10 tips to help you along.
3 CommentsEditor's Note: This "Inside the Marketers' Studio" post, where we ask savvy marketers for their take on the burning marketing questions of the day, is inspired by a panel on Canada-specific search issues at the upcoming Search Engine Strategies Toronto conference.
In working with clients on their search engine optimization and paid search programs, I'm often asked questions about Canada-specific search topics that run the gamut from spelling issues (that darn "u") to bilingual challenges. I asked a few marketers who specialize in SEO and PPC to answer the following three questions:
- What do you think is the key Canada-specific challenge facing Canadian paid search marketers?
- What is the first step they should take to address that challenge?
- What are your top 2 or 3 favourite resources/tools/blogs for marketers who want to be more effective at search marketing?
They've shared their experiences and insights below – we'd be delighted if you shared YOUR answers in the comments!
Ari Shomair
Ari Shomair is the Director of Marketing Optimization at henderson bas in Toronto.
1. What do you think is the key Canada-specific challenge facing Canadian paid search marketers?
Although the environment has been improving, there is still “noise” in the Canadian PPC marketplace from click arbitrage businesses. The SEM arbitrage business model is basically to use highly-optimized SEM campaigns to acquire cheap traffic, and then resell that traffic at a profit. You have probably seen click arbitrage sites before; they normally contain a generic image in the top left corner of the screen (e.g. two hands shaking, a picture of a woman smiling), a heading which contains the keyword you searched for (“find credit cards today!”) as well as a list of links with one line descriptions.
Click arbitrage businesses flourished in Canada specifically because many American companies use North American geo-location databases, meaning their ads showed to both Americans and Canadians. Because of this, historically a click arbitrage firm could buy search ads in Canada at lower CPCs than the United States (both due to currency and competition differences), and then resell that traffic to Americans at a profit.
While click arbitrage may seem relatively harmless, it both increases CPC rates on the search engines, as well as sours user experience when clicking search ads. The reason why Canadian businesses specifically should be concerned is many click arbitrage sites are now populated with Canadian ads. In other words, many Canadian businesses are effectively paying click arbitrage firms to bid against them in the SEM marketplace. This occurs because the Canadian business is buying ads on content networks, which are then being served on the arbitrage sites.
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