My 5 All-Time Favorite Books on Marketing

You witness it every day: the fundamentals elude many a marketer's grasp.

But imbibing the fundamentals is fun. And easy.

Just make a pact with yourself to (re)read these five mind-blowing game-changers in the next few months.

You'll thank yourself.

Your boss will thank you, too.

Confessions of an Advertising Man. David Ogilvy's 1963 romp is a blueprint for sound marketing. In keeping with its title, the book begins, "As a child I lived in Lewis Carroll’s house in Guildford. My father, whom I adored, was a Gaelic-speaking highlander, a classical scholar, and a bigoted agnostic. One day he discovered that I had started going to church secretly."

Positioning. Revolutionaries in 1981, Al Ries and Jack Trout were the first marketers to recognize content glut was our biggest challenge. The book opens with the statement, "Today, communication itself is the problem. We have become the world's first overcommunicated society."

Influence. In Orwell's year, 1984, Robert Cialdini mashed business and psychology to create every marketer's playbook. Cialdini has just augmented his classic with a new book, Pre-Suasion. You might read this book, too.

Maximarketing. Stan Rapp and Tom Collins ushered in the age of personalization in 1986. The technology has changed, but the principles they cite haven't. When Maximarketing was published, David Ogilvy said, “Everyone in advertising must read this book.”

New Rules of Marketing and PR. David Meerman Scott blundered onto a path for marketing his employer's products and turned his journey into a 2007 book. Marketing hasn't been the same since. Scott didn't invent content marketing, but he was the first marketer to recognize its primacy. "Put out great content, and you’re great," he said. "Put out crappy, and you’re crappy."

NOTE: I have encountered a sixth ground-breaker that belongs on the list, Experiential Marketing. 

E-mail: The Marketer's Trump Card

While e-mail marketers wish everyone had OCECD (Obsessive-Compulsive Email Checking Disorder), consumers indeed check their emails avidly, according to a new study by Mapp Digital.

Nearly all consumers (98%) check emails 3 times a day, the study shows; and over one-fourth (28%) check them 4 to 10 times.

That activity makes e-mail the marketer's trump card—particularly with Millennials—says Mapp Digital's CEO.

"The survey results suggest that this group of consumers are engaging with fewer brands on a more intimate level," says Mike Biwer.

"Millennials and Gen Y are strong audiences for email marketers, but now more than ever, the email marketing experience needs to cater to what they want and how they want it."

The study also shows smartphones are a driving force.

Eight of 10 Millennials (83%) check their emails on smartphones; and 7 of 10 consumers in every age group do so.

Laundry Lists Kill

Want to kill audience interest quickly? Use a laundry list.

"We think dumping the entire contents of the benefits-basket onto a reader, viewer, or listener will outpull selective choice," copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis once said. "Not so, because emphasis becomes diluted. When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing."

But wait, it gets worse.

Laundry lists not only kill interest. They can kill a deal.

Good salespeople know this intuitively: If you want to kill a deal, introduce an extraneous element. Laundry lists introduce baskets of them.

Laundry lists bar interest and block deals. So avoid them.

To create a responsive ad, letter or email, choose one benefit your audience values, and subordinate the rest.

2,000 Maniacs!

Math classes mold our young minds to believe numbers.

Politicians exploit that.

• In 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy sparked a nationwide witch hunt by claiming 205 commies worked for the US State Department.
  
  
• In 2014, Representative Michele Bachman propelled cuts in food stamps for 850,000 US households by claiming 70 percent of the funds went into the pockets of Washington bureaucrats.
  
  
• In 2016, Member of Parliament Boris Johnson triggered Brexit by claiming EU membership cost the UK £50 million every day.

You might sway mobs with it, but does "proofiness" work in marketing copy?

No! says the late copywriter and filmmaker Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Lewis' legions of axioms included his "Rule of Statistical Deficiency:"

Readers respond less to cold-blooded statistics than they do to warm-blooded examples.

In On the Art of Writing Copy, he urged marketers to avoid statements like:

75% of the children affected might be saved.

Marketers should write instead:

We lost Jimmy today. His parents knew his pitifully short days were numbered. They never lost hope... until the end. But Mary, Karen, and Billy are still alive. We're fighting for their lives.

Fine for fundraisers. But what about B2B marketers?

Statistics are still deficient.

The following leaves you chilly:

71% of HR directors say our LMS is a very useful tool to enhance employee learning.

But doesn't this warm your blood?

We asked HR leaders from 10 companies if our LMS boosts enterprise learning. Execs from Acme, Spacely, Soylent, Wonka, Sirius, Clampett Oil, and Burns Industries said yes. Our clients experience the difference.

NOTE: Herschell Gordon Lewis departed this life September 26 at the age of 90. He wrote more than 20 books on marketing and produced over 40 films.

Pick a Peach

Good words are worth much, and cost little.
                                                                      
                                                                                       George Herbert

Sunday's trip to the farmers' market told me peaches are in season. They all cost the same, so we put a lot of care into picking the fattest, prettiest and juiciest. We picked up a lot of them before settling for the best.

You can spot the careless writer easily: when it comes to word choice, she's the one who settles for the first peach she picks up.

She publishes pap like this:

Your IT application infrastructure is the foundation of your business. It must be scalable, available, and secure. It must also evolve as your business needs do. This is why you need more than a support contract from your technology vendor. You need a collaborative relationship. Such a relationship is the key to a successful strategy for deploying and maintaining an enterprise platform. Red Hat understands this need.

Roget's Complaint, Rule Number 2 of copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis' "three key rules of copywriting," states:

With all the specific descriptive words available, the writer who regards neutral, non-impact words such as needs, quality, features, and value as creative should agree to work for no pay.

Specifics sell, Lewis says; and specific descriptive words sell because they provoke the emotions of otherwise indifferent readers.

"Specific words generate far greater emotional reaction than generalized words; the more specific, the more the writer controls the emotions," he says.

Novelist Joseph Conrad famously said, "My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see.

So, a word to writers everywhere: If you want to make readers hear and feel and see, don't settle for the first word that shambles through your comatose cranium; and certainly don't, if you expect to be paid. Instead, open your Roget's. You will find it's packed with fat, pretty, juicy words that cost little, but are worth much.

Pick a peach.

POSTSCRIPT: Had she pushed herself, Red Hat's copywriter might have said:

You need an uncompromising IT platform—reliable, scalable and secure. One that will grow as your enterprise grows. And a sidekick you can depend on to be with you all the way. Red Hat understands that.

How to Get Your Emails Read Every Time

Part with a buck, pull in thirty-eight.

Email's ROI is remarkable, according to the Direct Marketing Association.

But you'll never hit that average, if your emails go unread.

"There are many reasons for failure and many relate to design," says Tanya McGinnity, brand journalist for Onboardly. 

She offers 10 rules to get your emails read:

1. Stay consistent. Discover a look and stick to it. "When recipients hear from you, they shouldn’t have any doubt that it’s you," McGinnty says. Where to start? Mimic the look of your website.

2. Choose a tailor-made template. "Just grabbing the first template you see and slapping some branding and copy in there isn’t going to make you any fans," McGinnty says. Choose the template suited for the job (newsletters aren't product pitches; event invitations aren't customer surveys; new-product announcements aren't time-limited offers; and so forth).

3. Leverage graphics. "Some of the best emails are simply visuals with a simple call out," McGinnty says. 

4. Leverage copy. Smart, well presented copy can grab more readers than graphics.

5. Keep it brief. Don't be the guy at the party who won't shut up. Remember, you can always blast the same readers another day.

6. Think small. Don't go overboard on big images. Big images will send your emails to the spam folder, or blow up a reader's inbox.

7. Optimize the size. Readers use a variety of devices. Make sure your emails are viewable on them all.

8. Trust the inverted pyramid. McGinnty urges you to think like a journalist about your emails. "At the top, a snappy headline that highlights the core message, supported by information and visuals that help persuade readers to click through. Then a no BS call to action button that gives no room for confusion on what to do."

9. Use one call to action. Ask readers to take just one action at a time, because that’s all they can take. "An infinite series of calls to action only confuse the recipient," McGinnty says. Philips Sonicare split-tested two different emails, one with a single call to action and one with four. The email with one call to action produced 371% more clicks and 1,617% more sales.

10. Edit, edit, edit.  Strive for clarity by cutting anything that can distract readers or go into another day's email. "Be tactical and review your email marketing piece like a chef eyes a plate before serving it up to a popular food critic," McGinnty says.

Buckshot's Back: P&G Bails on Ad Targeting

The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.

Howard Luck Gossage

In his blog {grow}, marketing maestro Mark Schaefer asks, "Has there ever been a question that targeted ads are going to perform better than shooting a bunch of buckshot ads out there?"

Schaefer asks the question in light of P&G's announcement that it will abandon Facebook ad targeting, due to the strategy's failure.

“We targeted too much, and we went too narrow,” P&G's CMO told The Wall Street Journal, “and now we’re looking at: What is the best way to get the most reach but also the right precision?”

Schaefer wonders aloud whether every advertiser might close more sales with buckshot ads, for no increase in spend (targeted ads cost more than buckshot ones).

He's firmly undecided.

"On the one hand, the P&G revelation shakes long-held assumptions, but on the other hand, I don’t think we necessarily need to make wholesale changes to strategy," Schaefer says. 

"If you’re a wedding photographer, targeting couples who have changed their status to 'engaged' probably still makes sense, right?"

My direct marketing experience has taught me buckshot advertising's okay; and that frequency's the real key to closing more sales.

From what I've seen, precision-targeting works when a product-related life-event takes place in proximity to the arrival of your offer in the prospect's mailbox. Absent that life-event, your offer is simply more noise ("mailbox clutter").

Targeting based on demographics cuts waste; but it doesn't capture sales. Frequency does that.

A case in point. My client, an insurance company, noticed each time it mailed an offer for term life the bulk of policies were bought by 33-year-old men. Curious about the trend, I called a sample of the men to find out why they'd acted. The resounding answer: a newborn had recently arrived, and dad was interested in baby's wellbeing. So we took two steps: We narrowed the list from a wide range of men and women to men ages 33-35; and, with the money saved, increased the frequency of mailings. Policy purchases skyrocketed.

Frequency rules because you just never know when a prospect is interested. For all its fancy algorithms, even Facebook doesn't know that.

If you can believe sales growth strategist Chet Holmes' research, at any moment only 3% of any population represents interested buyers of your product. If your offer reaches that 3% with enough frequency, you increase your chances to close.

Wait, you shout, I'm wasting big bucks on the other 97%! Not so, Holmes claims:

• 7% of the population at any moment is at least open to your offer
• 30% at any moment isn't thinking about your offer
• 30% at any moment would say it's uninterested
• Only 30% is really, truly uninterested

The upshot of all this?

A little buckshot never hurt anyone.

Unless you hunt with Dick Cheney.

15 Ways to Write Headlines When You Can't Write to Save Your Life

If the headline doesn’t stop people, the copy might as well be written in Greek.

—John Caples

Q. Where, besides the copywriter's over-caffeinated brain, do eye-stopping headlines come from?

A. The copywriter's under-rated bag of tricks. 

In Content Marketer, copywriter Josue Valles opens his bag of tricks—15 in all—for inspection. Here they are:

1. Steal ideas from clickbait sites like BuzzFeed
2. Lean on "psychological triggers"—specific numbers or razor-sharp benefits ("Reduce payroll 23% by automating absence management")
3. Promise super-fast results
4. Enter keywords into Google and steal ideas from the organic search results 
5. Use proven words (here's a list)
6. Use Portent’s Content Idea Generator
7. Steal words and phrases people frequently use to ask questions on Quora
8. Enter keywords into BuzzSumo and steal ideas from the search results
9. Include the name of a big brand in your headline ("Richard Branson's 15 Hacks for Punctuality")
10. Test the emotive power of your headline with Advanced Marketing Institute's EMVHA
11. Test the responsiveness of your headline with Twitter and Facebook (use an A/B test)
12. Leverage the power of an image
13. Steal ideas from newsletters 
14. Evoke curiosity (hint: use Linkbait Generator)
15. Steal ideas from HARO searches

Bob James' Bonus Hack: Steal this book.

Mel Ordway Betters Himself

Mel Ordway's troubles began the day he was assigned Nat Bowen's old territory.

That morning, and for weeks thereafter, whenever he called a customer, Mel was regaled with tales of Nat's famous "sparkle."

Mel guessed Nat's sparkle was largely a matter of physique. The man was an athlete, after all. Mel was out of shape. So to get some sparkle, he began to diet, take long walks, and practice deep-breathing exercises.

Then Mel's wife got on his case.

Phyllis told him that, though she'd been smitten when they were dating, after three years of marriage to him she'd decided Mel was unattractive. He was a day-dreamer, a worry-wart, a promise-breaker, and an intellectual lightweight, Phyllis said. "No wonder you haven't made the hit with the firm that Nat has."

So at Phyllis' insistence, Mel went to the public library and checked out a pile of books: books on improving concentration and memory; on the psychology of personality; and on business and the industry he worked in.

Mel studied the books and, within only weeks, saw his sales increase. His customers began to mention his "sparkle." His boss gave him more room to negotiate prices. And Phyllis grew more affectionate.

Mel became a regular patron of the public library after that. He was firmly on the path to self-betterment.

Mel Ordway's story appeared in the March 1918 edition of The Business Philosopher, a monthly magazine published by Arthur Frederick Sheldon. It was just one of hundreds of similar case studies of under-performers who embraced "Sheldonism" to turn things around.

Now forgotten, Sheldon was once a prominent Chicago business executive; a cofounder of the Rotarians; and the man who coined the slogan, “He Profits Most Who Serves Best.”

Sheldon also launched an industry that came to be called "correspondence education."

In 1902, full of sparkle himself, Sheldon began offering a mail-order self-help course that, at the height of its popularity thirteen years later, would be taken by more than 10,000 salespeople annually.

Sheldon's interests, as reflected in the course materials and the pages of The Business Philosopher, spanned many topics, from personal selling to labor relations, business ethics to economic justice; and helped shape the thinking of a generation of salespeople.

In 1908, Sheldon relocated his mail-order business from downtown to a Chicago suburb named Rockefeller. He bought a 600-acre campus, built a school, and hired nearly 200 local residents to help run it. The Sheldon School offered courses in shorthand, typing, bookkeeping and, naturally, salesmanship.

A year after the school opened, the town changed its name from Rockefeller to AREA, in tribute to the school's motto, Ability. Reliability. Endurance. Action.

AREA, says The Business Philosopher, names a "four-fold capacity" you must embrace; until you do, "complete success is impossible."

Don't believe it?

Just ask Phyllis.

A Shark in Sheep's Clothing

Sharklike companies scare clients off.

So it's heartening to see a venture capital firm so self-confident it's willing to empathize.

Rare for the breed, First Round telegraphs amity at every juncture.

The firm, for example, advertises on its website the 80 events it sponsors every year.

It doesn't push a calendar of dates and locations, but instead explains why events have value:

Starting a company is lonely, and founders have to make difficult decisions every day with imperfect information. In our experience, the best safety net is the advice and experience of fellow entrepreneurs.

The firm's gentle touch then assures sheepish clients participation will pay off:

Whenever we get members of our community in a room, magic happens. That’s why our Knowledge Program’s robust events—ranging from cozy dinners to major summits—are designed to get real, vulnerable conversations started. People leave with new ideas and actions they can apply immediately to keep growing and getting better. You won’t find any stick-on name tags here—we hate them.

How about you? Is your website all facts and mission talk? Or do you show clients you understand their fears?

When you evidence a bit of empathy, you boost your effectiveness. As direct marketer Hershell Gordon Lewis advises:

"If we can avoid becoming so wrapped up within the cocoon of our organization’s purpose, goals, and means of recruitment, effectiveness has to go up. So as best you can, you should apply this litmus test to any messages you’re considering sending: If I were receiving this message, not sending it, would it motivate me to respond? 

"See how easy? See how rare?"

How to Choose the Right Email Marketing Consultant (Infographic)

Been-around blogger Matt Banner contributed today's post. Matt teaches techniques for better blogging at OnBlastBlog.

Email marketing offers an immensely high return on your investment, but in most cases you will need a consultant to help you master today’s top strategies. 

The right email marketing consultant:

• Understands today’s underlying strategies and tools. 

• Understands your brand and of the voice you use when speaking to your users.

• Can build a list of people interested in your product or service.

• Sweats the details, because everything about your emails matters, from the length of the subject line to the content within. 

The latter is where a skilled copywriter comes into play. The copy within your emails must be compelling and properly written to ensure that it grabs readers' attention immediately and keeps them engaged throughout. The ability to write strong sales copy is also a must, as the call-to-action is massively important. 

In order to properly choose a consultant, you will first need a basic knowledge of what makes any email marketing campaign successful.

Take a look at the infographic below to find out more about what defines a strong email marketing strategy. Using this information, you can better choose a consultant.

The Art of Art is Simplicity

The art of art, the glory of expression, is simplicity.

—Walt Whitman

Simplicity's cool... so cool, brand researchers now index it.

But before it was cool, two artists preached simplicity every week on popular TV shows.

The beatnik, Jon Gnagy

Beatnik Jon Gnagy premiered in 1946 on NBC's first regularly scheduled TV program, the hour-long variety show Radio City Matinee. 

In the opening segment of the first episode, Gnagy stood at an easel and demonstrated, in a few simple steps, how to draw a tree. 

The show's producer called those 10 minutes of airtime "pure television," and within four months gave Gnagy his own 15-minute show, You are an Artist—TV's very first spin-off.

Gnagy used his weekly show to teach viewers how to draw the barns, haystacks and water mills that symbolized bygone America. He sketched his subjects using four basic forms—the ball, cone, cube and cylinder—with shadows cast from a single light source. When he finished each drawing, he matted and framed it, so—voila—the piece was ready to hang on the wall.

During each broadcast, Gnagy also pitched his branded art kit, complete with pencils, paper and a book of drawing lessons.

While Gnagy's prime-time show lasted only two years, it continued in weekend syndication for another 12, inspiring thousands of Boomers to learn how to draw chestnut trees, horse corrals and covered bridges.

The hippie, Bob Ross

Hippie Bob Ross preached simplicity for 11 years through his half-hour PBS show, The Joy of Painting.

Remembered for his fuzzy Afro and fuzzier aphorisms—"Happy little trees" being the most famous—Ross popularized the 16th century oil painting technique known as “wet on wet."

He also marketed a branded line of paints.

Throughout the 1980s, Ross' weekly show (which his business partner called “liquid tranquilizer”) inspired thousands of pre-Internet kids, if not to pick up a paintbrush, at least to contemplate das Künstlerleben.

Ross himself finished over 30,000 paintings in his lifetime, many of which he donated to PBS fundraisers.

Punctuation Power

Novelist Cormac McCarthy once told Oprah, "If you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate."

McCarthy rations his use of “weird little marks" strictly.

“I believe in periods, in capitals, in the occasional comma, and that’s it.”

McCarthy adopted his unusual technique while in college, where a professor asked him to Americanize the punctuation of the a bunch of 18th century essayists for a planned anthology.

Before the 20th century, most writers overused punctuation when writing for publication (though not in private letters and journals).

Contemporary punctuation is clean—and easily mastered. Strunk and White, in fact, cover the basics in just four "elementary rules."

But effective punctuation means more than avoiding "weird little marks."

Copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis says punctuation is vital to credibility.

He believes there's a "psychology of punctuation" every writer should heed:

• Question marks are "interactive," involving readers automatically

• Quotation marks around a term say you appreciate its novelty—and help readers accept the unfamiliar

• Decimal places in a price ($49.99) lower the perceived value of the product

• An exclamation point doesn't make a true statement any more true; and two or more signal that your excitement is phony

• Colons have force: they push readers onward

• An asterisk suggests you're lying

• A dash is stronger than an ellipsis

• Commas clarify a series, making the "Oxford comma" is a must

HAT TIP: Video producer Ann Ramsey brought McCarthy's interview to my attention.

5 Big Tips for Better Mobile Marketing

Sophorn Chhay contributed today's post. He is the inbound marketer at Trumpia, a mobile content delivery service that lets users customize their one-to-one marketing.

Sure, you might have a mobile marketing plan. But is it innovative?

In 2016, run-of-the-mill approaches won't take you very far; and, although most mobile marketers follow year-long plans, the fact is effective mobile marketing requires constant innovation.

If you want to stay ahead, check out the following tips, guaranteed to boost your results.

Tip One: Get Tight with Video Ads

Today, 80 percent of Internet users carry smartphones, and buyers are responding to video ads at alarming rates. You can benefit massively from video advertising.

Tip Two: Get Automated with SMS

Did you know you can automate your own SMS campaigns? Better yet, you can segment your audience and shoot out customized text messages. To get automated with SMS, contact a trustworthy provider. Textpedite, among others, streamlines the process.

Tip Three: Distribute an App

Americans currently spend more time using mobile apps than they do watching television. By incorporating an app into your plans, you'll give your brand greater meaning. Marketers are already reworking their entire strategies around apps (airlines, for example, are offering “nearby eatery” apps to frequent flyers). But make your app count, if you want to see it used.

Tip Four: Gain Data from SMS Surveys

Feedback means a lot to customers, and it's easy to conduct business when you know your customers' wants, needs and buying habits. SMS surveys procure a wealth of data and can garner otherwise unobtainable feedback.

Tip Five: Create a Social Campaign

In today’s mobile world, antisocial companies drop like flies, while companies like Starbucks win big. The brand’s “Race Together” and “Create Jobs for the USA” campaigns proved that promoting altruistic causes works. Sure, goodwill is a byproduct of powerful business practices; but it’s also a byproduct of social outreach.

Direct

Ever notice how brief and clear good direct mail letters are?

How direct is your writing?

Blogger Josh Bernoff asked 547 business writers what troubles them about other people's writing. He discovered:

• 65% think others' writing is too long

• 65% think others' writing is poorly organized

• 54% think others' writing is riddled with jargon

• 49% think others' writing is not direct enough

"Now we have proof that brevity, organization, and clarity issues in what you write are frustrating people more than you think," Bernoff says.

Writing shorter—compressing your arguments into tight little packages—can help.

By writing shorter, the organization of your arguments becomes clearer—and your writing more direct.

"Worry about being brief and clear, and the reader will perceive you as direct."

6 Simple Tips for Presenting Benefits that Convert

"Copywriting can be fatally disconnected from the real world of buying and selling," says Brad Shorr in Convince & Convert.

To bridge the gap, B2B marketers need to converse with salespeople, because "they are in the trenches, actually talking to customers and prospects and hearing firsthand what motivates them to buy and what keeps them from buying," Shorr says.

But how do you turn the conversations into copy that converts? Shorr offers six tips:

Lead with "application" benefits. First things, first. Nothing else matters if the product offered doesn't fill buyers' needs.

Hit buyers over the head. When you're reaching more than one audience, call out the high-value benefit applicable to each segment. Here, subheads and design can help.

Let customers do the talking. Testimonials, "if they are employed systematically and not arbitrarily," speak volumes. Using a benefit-bearing subhead to introduce a testimonial will clarify it.

Track. Track website form and phone leads back to their marketing sources, to learn which benefit statements convert the most buyers, and favor those statements in the future.

Get personal. "Don’t underestimate the power of personal benefits, even in B2B," Shorr says. Find out what they are by interviewing buyers. Prompt them to choose or rank personal benefits from a list.

Avoid temptations to pile on benefits. Avoid at all cost the "laundry list of benefits." Lists only convert buyers into skeptics.

Want to be a Writer? There's a Catch.

In 1953, Joseph Heller was employed as a copywriter at Merrill Anderson when he imagined a novel that, eight years later, would appear as Catch 22.

"Working on Catch, I’d become furious and despondent that I could only write a page a night," Heller once told an interviewer. "I’d say to myself, ‘Christ, I’m a mature adult with a master’s degree in English, why can’t I work faster?'”

Moxie isn't always included among the copywriter's traits, though it should be. One page a night for eight years takes a lot of moxie.

Hubspot contributor Matthew Kane says copywriters must have nine other traits to be any good. They must be:

Top-notch researchers and interviewers. "Copywriters will need to pivot from client to client and sometimes industry to industry," Kane says. "As such, they’ll need to get up to speed—quickly." Interviews with experts add context to samples and reading materials.

Knowledgeable about audiences. "We try to write in the vernacular," David Ogilvy once said. Ads, ebooks, case studies and blog posts only work when the writer knows "what the intended audience thinks, speaks, and searches for," Kane says.

Thirsty to learn. A copywriter should thirst for knowledge—but not turn insatiable. "Copywriters know their goal should be to learn as much information about the product and the audience as possible to write effective copy—and nothing more."

Informed. "Bad copywriters often stuff their work with purple prose or other literary devices in an attempt to make some sort of high-minded art out of an innocuous project," Kane says. "Good copywriters, on the other hand, understand the modern world. They’re knowledgeable about how consumers skim and read, understand the importance of an attention-grabbing headline, can articulate the sales and marketing objectives, and know a thing or two about SEO and keyword optimization."

Thick-skinned. Rejecting feedback from others never works. "Good copywriters believe in their convictions but understand that they may not always be right."

Self-assured. Good copywriters can explain to critics why they took a particular approach and chose particular words.

Anti-perfectionist. “Art is never finished, only abandoned," da Vinci once said. "Good copywriters realize that the pursuit of perfection—while noble—is futile," Kanes says. "They know that they can go on tweaking forever, but understand that 'good enough' is exactly that."

Willing to seek help. Writing is a solitary pursuit. "As a result, many copywriters have the tendency to view themselves as a 'lone wolf,'” Kane says. But good copywriters seek out mentors, editors, teachers and advisors who will push them to do better work.

Always reading. "An exceptional copywriter is always aware of the latest industry trends," Kane says. "They cringe at coming across as out of touch."

The Clarity Commandment

The B2B marketing-scape is littered with statements like this one:

SpineMap 3.0 Navigation Software is designed to optimize the surgical experience through an intuitive solution which includes a personalized surgical workflow to help support OR efficiency.

Much of B2B copy not only bores, but breaks a rule Herschell Gordon Lewis calls "The Clarity Commandment:"

When you choose words and phrases, clarity is paramount. Don’t let any other component of your communication interfere with it. 

Like other commandants handed down, easier said than done.

Clarity comes from more than short words and phrases.

It comes from avoiding jargon and any terms with less than laser-precision.

"In our enthusiasm for creating uniqueness, sometimes we lapse into poetry or in-talk, or we pick up phraseology that may make sense within the office but is gobbledygook to outsiders," Lewis says. 

"Or we go just one step beyond clarity—not a cardinal sin, but not a message that’s quickly and clearly understood."

Clarity's at risk whenever ambiguity rears its head.

Think about the example above:

Really, what's an optimized surgical experience?

A personalized surgical workflow?

What is OR efficiency?

And clarity's at risk whenever we add the unnecessary.

Why an intuitive solution? 

Why to help support?

"Clarity is hog-tied to simplicity," Lewis says.

And simplicity's, well, simple.

Copy that doesn’t demand analysis is more likely to hit its goal—command of the reader’s attention—than complex copy.

PS. An inquiring reader asks, How would you handle the statement above? Here goes:

SpineMap 3.0 Navigation Software gives you a second pair of eyes and hands during back surgery. Less time in the OR means more time on the green.

Now, I think I'll go watch This is Spinal Tap.

Stifle Yourself

Impatient with blabbermouths, Archie Bunker was prompt to say,"Stifle yourself."

Of the two greatest sins B2B marketers cannot resist—jargon and pomposity—the more deadly is pomposity.

Jargon merely baffles brains.

But pomposity kills affinity—and engagement.

Though it's tempting to reach for flowers like endwise, discoverable, holistic, generative and ninja-like, it's self-defeating.

"Godfather of direct marketing," Herschell Gordon Lewis, puts it plainly in Copywriting Secrets and Tactics:

“Overstretching for colorful words can damage reader empathy. Stay within acceptable bounds. Once again we see hard evidence that strong direct response writing can require the discipline of vocabulary suppression.”

Tempted by showy vocabulary?

Stifle yourself.