Christine Taylor's Core Copywriting

How to Cash In on a Successful Customer Relationship

Sure the check in the mail is good. But don't stop there -- leverage your successful sales stories by writing customer success stories/case studies around them. They're one of the most powerful tools available to your sales force.

Why are they so popular? Because they are compelling to prospective customers. References and testimonials are great things to have but customer success stories flesh out those testimonials and give them teeth. And if you match the case study customer’s industry to the prospects, it’s clear to prospects that your company knows how to successfully operate in a given market.

Click here to read more about increasing sales with a case study program.

When is writing in-house a false economy?

One of my favorite clients on the agency side contacted me a few weeks ago about writing a large series of case studies for one of their clients. I'd do the writing, the agency would do the project managing. We presented a very reasonable price per case study and agreed to an aggressive schedule.

However, the client company apparently experienced sticker shock with this many case studies and decided to try to do it in-house.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? Of course not, if they have the in-house expertise and time to write and manage the things. But large case study projects, where a company is producing 50 or more within a short time period, is an horrendous project to dump onto in-house staff. And since companies with case studies stand to make a large amount of money with them, outsourcing a case study program can make much better financial sense than burdening already-busy internal resources. We'll see what happens. It's my fond hope that they give up, contact the agency and outsource the project -- which will be better for them, better for the agency and better for me! Heh, everybody wins. 

Copywriting Does NOT Equal Direct Mail

Something I learned when searching the web for copywriting articles: the vast majority of articles out there are directed to B2C direct mail copywriting. Here's a quick sampling: "10 Eyepopping Ad Copy Secrets!" "3 Steps to Better Sales Copywriting!" and my personal favorite, "How to Get Your Prospects to Do Exactly What You Want by Tormenting their Brains." O.K.....

Don't get me wrong, B2B copywriting has ads and sales copywriting too, and it's all supposed to end ultimately in a sale. But B2B marketing collateral copywriting takes a different road towards the sale. That road is information. Real information, useful information. And a terrific way to draw reader attention and trust to you and your company.

• White paper: How to apply the vendor's technology to the reader's problems, and why that will make a positive difference to them. Benefit to you: Viral marketing, long shelf life in many cases.
• Bylined article: Inform the reader about a technology in a vendor-neutral atmosphere. Benefit to you: Legitimizes your technology and builds your reputation among highly targeted segments.
• Case study: Influence by presenting your technology in practical settings. Benefit to you: Proves that you know what you're doing in real-life implementations, builds reader confidence, terrific sales tool.

Technology marketers need all three types because they influence in different ways.