Ted Bendixson, Freelance Copywriter and Shred Advocate

It’s a problem I see all too often in the advertising copy world. Companies hire copywriters who create cleverly worded articles with no clear headline. The advertising copy sounds great when you read it, but it doesn’t actually generate sales.

Whenever you hire someone to do something, you should expect that person to deliver clear results. An IT consultant should improve your computer systems and make them more reliable, and a legal team should protect you from any potential lawsuits. Similarly, an advertising copywriter should improve the response rate you get from all of your marketing publications, both online and offline.

While many businesses agree with the above statement, almost none of them are willing to go through the trouble to put their writers to the test. They like the work that they see, and they assume it is good enough without giving any question to the real results it generates. There is only one way to truly know your writer has helped improve your business, and that is to test, test, test, and then test again.

How do you test your writers?

The online world makes it incredibly easy to test your writers. You can install analytics software on the individual pages you are concerned about and see how many people click through to the buy page or area you want to funnel them to. If you know what the clickthrough rate was before you hired your copywriter, you will have a basis of comparison for the new copy written. It’s a nearly flawless way to test your writer’s effectiveness.

Other forms of marketing content are a little trickier. If you are running a mail order campaign, you will need to to create a separate return phone number, physical address, or email address for each different print brochure you send out. That way, you will be able to know which brochures are getting the best response rates, and by extension, if your copywriter is doing a good job.

Don’t forget to use some of your previous marketing materials when testing your new copywriter. The new copy might not do as well as the previous copy, so it’s good to know that the new copy really is an improvement over the old copy. Sometimes, in spite of what our intuitions tell us, a piece of copy that we don’t like actually does a much better job of generating sales.

Where is the advertising industry headed?

Even in 2010, the advertising industry is still lacking the scientific rigor that has brought success to so many other fields. Clients are all too happy to hire a copywriter based on connections and image alone instead of documented results. Regrettably, I must admit that I myself am mired in this mess. In order to put food on my table, I work with clients who don’t test the copy I write. They’re more than happy with the job I do, but I sometimes wonder how I have actually helped them.

The decision to adopt scientifically rigorous standards in advertising lies on the shoulders of those who hire writers to improve their marketing campaigns. I undoubtedly want to see the industry move in this direction, but I can’t get all of my clients to see it the way I do. So consider this a challenge. I want you to make my job more difficult. I want you to demand more testable results.

My writing might sound great, but ask yourself this. What is it actually doing?

I have been working a lot with Blueline Safety to help them reach out to more potential customers and get them to  see how small changes in the way they approach safety training can make a big difference when it comes to making their employees safe and saving money on worker’s compensation claims. It has been wonderful helping them with their marketing needs and finding the right words to express their unique strategy and vision as a company.

Go head and see what’s been done for Blueline Safety.

My clients are being duped, and I need to say something to set the record straight. Press release distribution services, like PRWeb and others, have been advertising their “SEO services,” in an effort to convince businesses to pay extra for a completely unnecessary service.

Some of you may be under the impression that you need to write a search engine optimized press release in order to get backlinks to your website via news services. But here is the reality. Google has already beaten you to the punch. It doesn’t matter if your press release has a bunch of links with the right anchor text because, in all likelihood, Google will only index one of your syndicated articles from one news source.

Gaming the search engines is so 1997

Google has evolved over the years. It is now able to detect multiple copies of the same article on several different sites. When it does this, it recognizes the article as “duplicate content,” and it uses special programs to stop all of this extra content from having an effect on your search engine rankings.

Why does Google do it? Because Google is trying to cut down on the amount of spam that gets onto the web. By de-emphasizing the effects of having multiple copies of the same article on many different sites, Google is removing the incentive to create spam. As more content developers realize this, they are compelled to create genuine content for a human audience. The web suddenly becomes more relevant and enjoyable.

Matt Cutts explains the rest

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Google’s Matt Cutts (head of Google’s anti-spam initiative) will explain the rest.

“I’m not against doing press releases; press releases can be a useful part of getting traffic and building a brand. For ranking in Google, however, the main benefit of a press release is not direct links or PageRank from the press release directly; it’s primarily the people who decide to write an article and link because of that.”
-Matt Cutts, Comments on Newsweek SEO article.

Here is the takeaway. Don’t create a press release because you want to increase your website’s Google ranking. Create one because you have a really important piece of news. The more interesting your press release is for a human audience, the more likely it is that some of those humans might just decide to link to your site out of their own volition. That’s the kind of “link juice” money can’t buy.

Buck Parker and the folks over at Goskateorgohome.com are one of my favorite clients so far. I had the joy of creating over 1,500 skateboarding product descriptions for their company. It was a blast just allowing my ideas to run wild. I usually get to be creative, but I never get the same amount of freedom as I did with this project. I would definitely do it all over again.

If you’re curious, go and have a look at the product descriptions I have created for them.

As a freelance writer, I get a large share of my work from bidding sites. Because anybody can post a project on these sites, there is amazing proliferation of unethical behavior. I have seen it all, from buyers who want you to create testimonials out of thin air to the “gracious” employer looking to pay unsuspecting souls a mere $1.50/hr for good work. Having spent as much time as I have in this profession, I have learned something. Being ethical and selective with the projects you choose to take on, while emphasizing the quality of your work, will always give you a better income than being willing to compromise any of these.

My ethical dilemma. What would you do?

Here is a case in point. I was hired over Elance to write some website content for a new product. I didn’t know the exact specifications until I had won the auction. The buyer sent me the instructions after he escrowed the money. Within his set of instructions, he told me to make up a few testimonials for the product.

I saw this and felt a little uneasy. There is no question that I was facing an ethical conundrum. The money was already in escrow. He was waiting for me to get started on the project. If I were to reject the project based on ethical considerations, my client would have to go through a lot of red tape before getting another project going. My reputation could suffer.

Your reputation as a writer is always on the line.

In the heat of the moment, we often forget to step back and think about what our actions could mean in the long term. The reality is that if I were to make up testimonials, my reputation would suffer much more than if I were to simply refuse to work for somebody like this. It really isn’t enough to only refuse to do the testimonials. If you are serious about ethics, you wish your client well and tell him you can’t work with somebody who is willing to falsify important information. And then you move on.

Think about who your work for. If your employer doesn’t have a clear understanding of what is ethical, he should be avoided. It will catch up to you.

Whatever you do, don’t buy into the idea that you have to be sneaky in order to make money online as a freelance writer. There is an ethical way to promote products and websites via Search Engine Optimization (SEO), splash pages, press releases, and original content. Ironically, the most demanding clients are also the least ethical. My best clients give me more than enough time to complete a project, and they pay me quite handsomely. I make good money, and I’m not writing 500 SEO spam articles in three days.

You don’t have to either.

I have been working with Appiction ever since this last December, creating viral content that gets people excited about developing new iPhone and iPad applications. Appiction has some awesome projects in the works right now! If you have an idea for a new iPhone or iPad app, and you don’t even know if it’s a good one yet, they are very happy to walk you through it and discuss all of your development options. I’ve even thrown a few ideas around with them myself, and even though they didn’t pan out, the lessons I’ve learned about this new platform were more than worth the time I took to discuss it.

From the time I have spent working with Appiction, I have learned that the future of development lies with these incredible devices. The mobile web will soon be the only web. It’s a fascinating transformation to watch, and I am very excited to be a part of it.