From: AWAI Summit <thewriterslife@awaionline.com>
Date: Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 2:01 PM
Subject: Impress any client with these 5 questions
To: <stevescott@techacq.com>
 April 10, 2020 Dear Steve, Being the "go-to writer" for a good client makes the writer's life easy… You're constantly handed work without a lot of additional effort. You're paid professional fees without having to haggle. And you're seen as a trusted partner and part of the team. Of course, it all starts with landing great clients in the first place… After 34 years in the industry and hundreds of conversations with potential clients, Copywriting Expert and AWAI Faculty Member Gordon Graham has discovered the way to impress clients is to ask them the five questions he shares today. Follow Gordon's lead and you'll be more likely to land a writing assignment. And if it's something you've never written before, no worries… Just say "yes!" and then head over to the AWAI website! We likely have a training program that will walk you through the assignment step-by-step. I hope you have a safe and relaxing weekend … If you haven't yet, remember to confirm your subscription to The Writer's Life by clicking here. I've got some valuable issues planned for next week that will keep you moving forward towards you writing and financial goals. To your success, Rebecca Matter To Impress Any Copywriting Client, Ask These 5 Surefire Questions By Gordon Graham Over the years, I've talked to hundreds of potential clients about their content projects. During those conversations, I've found a few questions I can ask that never fail to impress. And today, I'm going to share the most powerful ones with you. When you ask these questions, you stand out from the crowd. You prove you know what it takes to create good B2B content. And you show that you're adaptable and that you will deliver what the client needs. Who wouldn't be impressed by a writer with that approach? Next time you're talking with a prospect, here are five surefire questions to ask. (Keep them handy and make them a part of your copywriting client intake interview.)
A persona is an archetype that represents a segment of the client's audience. A well-developed persona can include:
A good persona doesn't have to be long. For example, one could be "a middle-aged executive struggling to redo the website of a health insurance firm keen to sign up more consumers in the Midwest." Even one sentence tells you a lot. Everyone in B2B marketing knows they should develop personas. But it's remarkable how few companies actually have them. If they do, great! Seeing their personas gives you a target reader to write for. If not, say you'll need to talk some more about their audience before you start writing. After they hire you, interview your client for 20 or 30 minutes about their audience, and come up with some short sentences they can use as a start for their personas.
A style guide defines how a company handles common issues in grammar, spelling, and punctuation, such as:
There's no right or wrong on these issues. It doesn't matter what your Grade 3 teacher taught you. The client is always right. And a truly professional writer can vary their style to match any guide. Why does this matter? For one, the closer you match a client's house style, the less time they spend cleaning up your text, and the easier you are to work with. Two, a good style guide is a third party to settles silly arguments. If a reviewer insists on putting two spaces after a period because they learned that in college, you can ignore that suggestion because "that's not our style." Case closed. The most popular style guides are:
Some industries have glossaries or published style guides of their own. For software, there's The IBM Style Guide, The Microsoft Manual of Style, Read Me First from Sun, and the Yahoo! Style Guide. Some companies develop their own style guide, anything from a couple of pages of notes to a 20-page document. If they have one, get it and follow it. If they don't, stick to AP Style.
In B2B content, workflow means who will look at your work after you send it in. Do they have an editor, a designer, or a web developer? Are they in-house or freelance like you? Do they use a blog system like WordPress or a marketing platform like Hubspot or Oracle? Here's the follow-up: Can you format your text to save others time? One way to do this is to get a sample document and follow these elements:
Wouldn't you sooner work with a writer who hands in complete text formatted the way you need it, rather than drafts missing all sorts of bits and pieces that needs a lot of work?
These days, every marketing campaign — and every piece of content — is measured and evaluated. In the old days, every copywriter dreamed of writing a control-busting sales letter: a piece that generates more money than anything else the company ever mailed. Today's equivalent in B2B content is the piece that earns more clicks, more engagement, and better SEO than anything else the company ever published. Every marketer uses certain metrics to measure success, anything from clicks to downloads to time on the web page. By asking about this, you show you know more than most writers. And it tells your client that you care about her success.
Repurposing means recycling the same content in a different medium to help reach more prospects. For example, one piece can be turned into another, like making a case study into a press release. A longer piece can be broken up into shorter pieces, like making a white paper into three or four blog posts. Or shorter pieces can be combined into something bigger, like putting together half a dozen blog posts to make a speech. To find out if a client can use that, just ask. I often say something like, "You can get a much better ROI on this white paper by repurposing it as a set of blog posts, a slide deck, a press release, or a placed article. Do you have anyone in-house to do that for you?" If they answer "No," or "Yes, but we're already slammed with work," that's your opportunity to offer your help. Who better to repurpose a piece of content than the writer who created it in the first place? Your questions matter more than their answers… Here are the answers I usually get, even from fairly big companies:
In some ways, simply asking these questions will matter more than how your prospect answers. Each question helps you stand out from the crowd as a professional. Best of all, they will get your client talking about themselves, their policies, their workflow, their team… and how you can help them. Once they start picturing working with you, you're getting close to signing the deal. Keep these five surefire questions handy and add them to your copywriting client intake interview. Use their answers to provide better service and create more effective and engaging copy. You'll become their "go-to" copywriter for future projects. Good luck! Do you have any questions about these five questions? Please share with us in the comments. For questions or requests: contact us online. Trouble viewing this email? View it in your browser, here. Ensure your subscription delivery. AWAI Whitelisting info available here. You are subscribed to this newsletter as stevescott@techacq.com. To unsubscribe from any future AWAI Special announcements and offers, please click here: Unsubscribe from AWAI Special announcements and offers. To unsubscribe from all AWAI broadcasts click here: I want to permanently unsubscribe from all AWAI emails. ©2020 American Writers & Artists Institute
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