People often ask the difference between writing for b2b and b2c. They share the same endgame and goal, but the style in which this is achieved is completely different. Great copywriting often appeals to one or the other, it isn’t until you analyse the content carefully that you realise who it is for, in brilliant copywriting, you can’t tell.

When writing for clients, the most important part is their client base, their customers and the people they are looking to convert. Depending on the type of customers they keep depends on your writing style and inevitably effects your copy.

Writing b2c. (Business to customer) is predominantly an easier readership, than b2b(business to business) simply because the people reading your content are often the decision makers, they’re often the people who want what you sell and have the money in their pocket to buy it.

From a copywriting perspective this makes life a little easier, identifying why they want your product, what appeals to them and how they feel when they have your product is pretty easy to write, basic market research and demographic analysis will give you what you need to know.

Another big benefit of b2c is the fact that there is one person reading your copy, the same person wanting your product and the same person holding the money, in b2b it’s quite different.

In b2b the content has to show them the benefits of picking you, for everyone that reads it, both secretary, manager, buyer and director all need to see the benefits of picking you, each person has different needs and will have different views of your product.

Allow me to explain…

The secretary – these are the people you should focus on predominantly, not only are they your first port of call in communicating with a potential client, but they also tend to read the most copy. How many directors ask their secretary or PA to look for a particular service. “Find a decent web agency, decorator, restaurant, training provider, etc. You can name anything and at some point, a secretary has made the first decision in picking you. A recruiter friend of mine called secretaries “the gatekeepers” and I couldn’t agree more, they are your first way in and often all you need.

Managers – in larger organisations managers will often be looking to acquire a particular product and service. In the dog eat dog world of middle management you need to look after number 1, so much so it carries into how they read your copy.
When choosing you they want to make themselves look brilliant, make themselves look like they’ve done the job, bought the best product or got the right service. Here they might not actually care about what YOU do, but how it will make THEM look.

Copywriters the world over accept that sometimes your readers don’t care what you sell!

Directors – The big fish are often the trickiest, as now your copy has to please 2 readers at the same time. A director has asked their secretary to find a product or service, you’ve managed to get on their list of 5, the list is then emailed or handed to the director(s) for them to make their decision, you copy needs to please them too!
You need to determine the balance between quality and price that exists in your marketplace, how much do your clients like good value compared to high quality, try and give them both. In an ideal world writing for a director is very similar to b2c again, you just need to add facts and figures to emphasize you USPs.

B2b content is often more difficult to write, but the rewards are always greater, business sales and contracts are often large and in turn people are willing to pay more if you can help them get a sale.

I’d love to know your thoughts on b2c vs b2b and how it affects your marketing strategies.

I thought i’d write a little article about copywriting with seo in mind and how it can be done effectively. Firstly, the keyword phrase “copywriting SEO” has the most traffic out of many copywriting KW terms, I thought i’d put it in to see if I can get a page ranking for the term “copywriting SEO”. (Elephant in room)

Writing seo friendly copy is all about getting the balance right, giving search engines what they want and getting your message across to readers. I’ll look at each party separately as they both need your undivided attention.

Google et al

Firstly, Google in particular are closing the gap between search engines and humans, trying to reach the holy grail which is, “what is good for search engines is equally good for readers” for example, they announced a while back that they have disregarded meta keywords as an seo attribute, yet still place a great deal of emphasis on meta descriptions, this is due to the fact that users see meta descriptions and not meta keywords, similarly Google are using page loading times to attribute SEO compliancy, again because users are browsing using mobile technology, where heavy java and chunky coding simply will take to long to load up.

The kind guys at search engine journal announced this boldly last week, although the rest of the SEO community found this in webmaster tools months ago!

With this in mind it is making copywriters focus on what the internet is all about, information! Original content, video and image media and social media has never had so much value under SEO, aligning both human need with search engine compliancy.

People with the money – humans

Writing for humans is the paramount of all online content, without which you wouldn’t be writing at all. This needs to have slightly higher priority than search engines in my opinion as the internet allows different channels to get traffic to your landing page. Your landing page better be good otherwise you won’t get goal conversions, no matter how many people visit your site.
Optimising media for humans is very similar to search engines. If you imagine that through browser issues, visitors cannot see images or video, only the text attached to the content, you’d want that content to contain information helpful for humans to still understand what the image/video contained. This form of media is as important as ever now that search engines are including the content in the SERPs.

A good title or subject line can be the difference between people reading and clicking through to your article or product and not.
Looking on digg will show you the potential of a good title.
Similar articles about the same story, containing the same views and reputation can differ greatly in CTR simply because one title compelled people to click over the other.

There are many ebooks, articles and blogs dedicated to teaching you how to write good titles and if I’m honest I think they’re a bit of a sham, similarly to “link bait generators” and other “systematic” attempts at suceeding at copywriting, the information tends to be generic and more common sense than words of wisdom.

The one element that these magic bullet solutions fail to acknowledge is the fact that every blog or article has many differences, each effecting the way an article is produced and received.

Purpose
The purpose of your article will instantly effect the decision of the title, if you are selling, informing or just voicing an opinion you have to create a title that reflects the content.

Location and style
Wherever you are publishing your content obviously reflects the style of writing and how the content is put together, if you are blogging for a hedge fund magazine site or a festival blog will differ greatly and has a serious influence on your voice and writing style which effects the way your title is written.

Most importantly – YOUR AUDIENCE
If you understand your readership, you’ll know what will get them reading. Your copywriting should be targeting your audience anyway so producing a title for your audience should be easier. “What will get them clicking and reading?” if you still struggle with the title after asking the question, you need to ensure that you know your target audience, you can’t writing for them if you don’t know what they want to read.

Know your audience well enough and the titles will be simple.

I’ve been considering the benefits of link baiting in relation to quality links, human traffic and ultimately conversions.

Link bait by definition, attracts people to link to a particular article, image, video or any other form of digital media, ebooks or audiobook also work really well!
From an SEO perspective link bait can generate links to your site/page with the visitors and users doing the link building for you. They may want to tell their friends about it and social bookmark it, they may want to comment on it and write in their own blog referencing the source.
If a video they may want to embed it on their own site, in short, the options to link to the content is easy and in abundance.

The difficulty is creating attractive link bait.

How to create linkable content?

This is the million dollar question, how do we get our customers to tell their friends about our product? Link bait goes some way in achieving the marketing holy grail.
There are certain categories that link bait can fall into which is a guarantee to be linked to.

Something funny – if I find something funny, I’ll tell my friends about it. Memes on the internet can grow so quickly, with a clever and amusing idea. Just look at the top videos on youtube, the famous ones etc I bet each one you can remember was funny!

Informative/helpful – people like useful content too! A how to guide, or hints and tips will get people linking asap, unlike a funny video, how-tos are industry specific in a sense that if you write a how to guide about a element of you industry, people will see you as an authority, other industry experts will begin to engage with you, allowing you to build online friendships, increasing linking to your site as well as the how to guide! – plus it feels good to be an industry expert, it increases your reputation! That is worth its weight in gold!

News and opinion – naturally people are demanding new information and industry news daily, here is an opportunity for you to report on industry news or show a balanced view and opinion on the subject matter. Unlike the other examples above, news and opinion needs to be produced quickly. If a new product is put to market you need to be speculative content prior to release, showing anticipation for the product, because if you’re interested in the new release, everyone else will be to!

My apologies for the blatant link bait title! But hey! It got you here!

I’ve just joined a gym for the first time in my short and relatively uneventful life (24+ years) and I’ve noticed the amount of energy I now have at my disposal is abundant, improving my thought processes, enthusiasm and more importantly reducing writers block (3-4pm especially) so I can continually produce great content, come up with new ideas, and feel enthused over the mundane.

Now granted I’ve had a powerade and redbull after training, but my energy is created in the gym rather than the sugar+ caffeine combo.

So how can the gym help copywriting?

With a long day behind you, you’ve had a dozen creative meetings, you’ve produced copy which could do with some tweaking, and you’ve seen the scale of the task ahead, energy and morale may be at an all time low. Built up tension and stress flows through your body, inevitably making it difficult to sleep…..and the process starts over again.

The need to release the stress is an absolute must, some people will get blind drunk at the weekend, which inevitably doesn’t do the body any good and is more of a distraction than a cure.

However, the gym is a perfect solution, it allows you to vent frustration, work up a sweat, and get rid of the stress that you’ve accumulated through the week.

Sure the gym costs the same as another contract phone, but hey the benefits outway that 10 fold, plus with £30 riding on it every month, you almost force yourself into it (which is nothing but a good thing I might add)

I’m sure through any writer’s life there is a point when the brain decides, “that’s it, I want to be a writer” be it fiction, technical, hell even copy, there is a point when you believe you have what it takes and pursue your wordsmith profession.

Don’t forget that moment.

I’ve found that when I’m venturing into a new area of writing, new clients, new styles, I have a feeling that envelopes me, wondering if I’m capable or not, to make this matter worse I constantly wonder if people are judging the content and wondering if I am who I say I am.

When this feeling arrives I remember 2 things, 2 things that I’m I’ll refer to whenever I’m in doubt.

Firstly, I believe I can write.
I believe that I have the ability to write well, I understand english, I understand my audience, I understand the style and I understand the client. With these elements in firm belief I have no problem in believing I am capable.
I follow successful concepts and keep up to date with areas of the industry, in particularly digital content and seo reaffirming the belief that I have the tools available to tackle the job in hand.

Secondly, the people I work for, (freelance, contract, full time employment or anything else) picked me, the thought I was capable and able to do the job, why would they hire/choose/pick someone who was unable to do what they required.

I’m sure I’m not the only person in the creative profession that doubts their ability, photoshop designers and branding experts must also go through the same self doubt, I’m sure it’s human.

After I’ve calmed down, usually with a coffee, I get on my way and continue to do what I get paid to do, to be a writer, to be a damn good writer.

People are lazy! We buy things that make our lives easier, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and cars not to mention costly surgical procedures which could be solved with some light exercise. This laziness extends into the way we read and what we read. It is paramount as a copywriter to identify why people want to read and what they are willing to cast their eye over.
One thing is certain. Readers like short sentences. They get their information quickly, wasting no time and therefore getting more information per hour!

Equally! Why, as copywriters, are we using 20 words to describe something that could take 10. We need to make sure that we are frugal with our word use, keeping it short and sweet, not boring to our readers!

So how do we do it?

Simple!

Keep sentences short, don’t let them drag on, don’t dilute the content and inevitably bore your readership (they’re easier to lose than to gain)

Keep paragraphs short too! Don’t make reading a daunting experience, don’t give your readers a paragraph that scares them, puts them off or gives the impression it is “too big to read”.
If you have a large paragraph, attempt to break it down, split it where a new idea stream starts or where you move off the point.

Keep you words short! Copywriting has never claimed book prizes for emotive prose and beautifully written novels, it has however forged businesses, got people to act and influenced what people buy since its origin. So keep you words short, keeping your writing style short and sweet creates an energy, a feeling of pace and staccato giving people the initiative to click, to buy, to call and to act!

This goes for all elements of copy, be it the title, the body or even resource and author boxes!

Try and give them exactly what they need, exactly what you want to give them in the exact amount of words you want to tell them in.