Dudes, I’ll tell you how to write if you don’t know how - and what’s the problem with copywriters?

Hello! This is a hedgehog, and he will now live with us. Specifically, I will lead here from time to time stories about how to write texts in the corporate blog of the man-steamer Michael, because of whom I got into this topic 11 years ago.

So the problem is simple. You explain well in words, but you can’t write anything properly. You know what? What a score. Because if you hire a special person - a copywriter - who will tell everything for you, it will be worse.
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No one except you knows all the features of your business. No one except you can be more accurate, more specific and convincing. No one except you will remember a living example from practice and will not say more precisely. You are a professional. And you probably understand what it is about, and distinguish professionals from salespeople by the very first words.

You already know how to write. Just never done it before.

Here is what you already know for sure:

• Speak very specifically. Because otherwise nothing.
• Be convincing. I mean, you can tell a friend exactly what and how.
• You know exactly what you need to pay attention to in your product or service.
• Understand what is important to your client. Because they talked.
• Think a few steps forward.
• And speak in such a way that it is clear from your speech - you understand the question 100%.

No copywriter can repeat this. Yes, they can write words smoothly, put them in sentences and make them glossy beautiful. But until you start working with pros, who take 3-4 thousand dollars for a couple of pages of text, it will work much worse than what you yourself say.

I dare say that if you are more or less okay with literacy, you are already writing excellent. All you need to do is drop the familiar ideas about how this is done, take it and start.

Business letter (spherical example in vacuum)

You need to write an official letter to your customer, partner or supplier. The most difficult, as in any text - start. My business partner Anton somehow had just such a problem, and he constantly asked me to write letters. And then I taught him one very simple technique.

To begin with, you take and write what constitutes the essence of the letter. In your own language, as if you were speaking to your friend. For example, your counterparty has delayed payment. Anton told me this:

- Listen, well, in short, they owe us money. We shipped the goods to them, they signed everything, but there is no money. Here, there is a contract. According to it - within 10 days. There is no point about the delay, see? Penny either. So they have been slowing for two months. I want to write a letter to pay.

Then you take it and write it in a letter as if it didn’t matter who read it. Turn your story into letters. Here is what Anton wrote:

"Hi, Misha. You owe us a lot of money. Give already, do not brake. We did everything. Or did you decide to throw so? If anything, we'll go to court now. "

Obviously, if you send such a letter, the result will be simply enchanting. But at the same time, pay attention, the essence is expressed very clearly and without ambiguities - which means we already have the most important thing - the plan!

The easiest thing remains - we translate each phrase into a business language. Here it is already possible to entrust the copywriter or do it yourself.

In the current situation, we choose the official language.

• “Hello, Misha!” - “Good afternoon, Michael!”
• “You owe us a lot of money” - “I remind you that we are expecting payment of 56 thousand rubles under contract No. 070813-02. "
• “Give already, do not brake. We did everything. ”-“ Under this contract, we have fulfilled our obligations, the goods are shipped on time, which is confirmed by the acts of 08/20/13.
• “Or did you decide to throw us like that?” - with this proposal, Anton got a little confused and made two steps of the translation. Here is the first option: “You should have paid for 10 days, but more than two months have passed. If you do not name the payment term, we will be forced to go to court. ” In principle, this version could already be sent, but he decided to soften the wording, keeping the essence. It turned out that: “I draw your attention that the 10-day payment term after the signing of the acts ended almost two months ago. Please specify the term of payment on your part. The fact is that our legal service is concerned about the status of the contract. ”

What happened? It's simple. He sent a letter, and after 3 days the money arrived in the current account.

The next letter to the client about the designer’s mistake he wrote already in two steps:

"Hello! Listen, we have a designer nakosyachil and drew you is not at all what you wanted. And I did not have time to look, he quickly sent everything, because it was urgent. In general, I'm sorry, we will fix today before the end of the working day. And he was already starred. "

In fact, prior to translation, this is already an excellent example of how business letters should be written to clients with whom you are friends. There is a very simple description of the situation, and complete sincerity, and the next step. But Anton with the client was not so close, so a translation was required. Here he is:

“Nikolai, good afternoon!

Our designer sent you in the morning the wrong layout that does not correspond to the technical task. The fact is that because of the urgency of the problem, he decided to send the result before the approval. Sorry for our mistake. Until the end of the working day you will have the correct version. I already explained to the designer the importance of the right processes and shot through the chest. ”

But I would still recommend never writing business letters in this terrible office language. It is enough to write what you think - and just go through the letter, replacing phrases that you should not send.

This is a very convenient and simple method. Stardom those who do not think so.

Let's do it again:

1. We talk about the situation to someone. It turns out the plan.
2. We write the letter as if it were just saying this to a “man from the street”, caring only about the facts, and not about the form.
3. We replace some of the phrases or give it away as a technical task to the radiator.

Back

Sometimes your subordinates will write official letters that are so furious that they simply cannot be sent. This usually happens in three cases:

1. Either the person thinks that a business letter can be written only in an incomprehensible language.
2. Or he does not know what to say, and is trying to hide behind the “bureaucracy”.
3. Or he is just afraid to write clearly, because something is not right somewhere.

Total - either we have Mowgli (seoshnik, educated marketers on school essays), or someone somewhere covers his ass. At the cost of understanding the letter.

In such cases, need a reverse translation. For example, here is a letter that is simply impossible to read:

"Good day!
We hereby inform you that in the period from 12/21/13 to 01/01/14 the shipment of goods in the company's warehouses will be limited due to the increased logistic load on transport hubs. Departures will be processed by our specialists as they are received, but we cannot guarantee that the standard deadlines for this period will be met in accordance with clause 4.3 of Contract No. 851 on the provision of services. For our part, we undertake to make every effort to ensure prompt shipment of goods. "

And about a page of the same text. Here's what would be much clearer:

"Good day!
From December 21 to January 9, our warehouse will be under heavy load due to the New Year. According to the contract during this period the shipment period is extended to 10 working days. We will do everything possible to ensure that your deliveries leave on time, but it is difficult to promise something more concrete for the New Year. Last year, in the same situation, it turned out in five days instead of two ordinary ones. ”

Why the hell do you find a good copywriter

The first obvious problem of copywriting in our country is the lack of correct guidelines. A copywriter simply does not know which text works and which does not . The customer does not understand what exactly is needed from a copywriter. As a result, it is possible for 5-6 years to work and rivet equally meaningless texts, not realizing that everything should be a little different.

The biggest fear of the copywriter (as well as the designer) is that they will not see his work . It happens, an excellent texture comes, and the copywriter tries to turn it into some kind of pompous "TV shop", although it would be enough just to slightly clean up the speech. Why? Just because the average customer pays for what he could not write himself. For the official, "beautiful", rich text stamps. Like the others.

The second problem is the lack of desire to find out the details . A copywriter should be not just a person who transforms a finished invoice, but a little researcher. You need to ask the right questions, get accurate answers and think how to use them. This is the intersection with marketing. If you do not understand the scale of a disaster, then just try to order a text about a company for a dozen copywriters, say, the metallurgical sector on the basis of a very poor data set. You will be unpleasantly surprised by the size of the final text, consisting almost entirely of stamps and copying theses from other similar texts.

So, the writer does not know the details - namely, they make up the text - and even less often than to get the details, he manages to check 2-3 variants of the same text in comparison. Such work is like visiting a huge shooting gallery with a single target. With a blindfold. If you have a lot of cartridges, sooner or later you will get. But, you see, the one who, perhaps, holds the weapon in his hands for the first time, but sees the target and traces of misses, is much better.

When you can check your texts again and again for thousands of people, you will see one simple thing. Receiving fast feedback, you will understand that most of the writing is a husk. And there should be less words, less letters and more facts.

One more thing. Most copywriters do not write directly to customers, but to customers. And evaluated by the customer. Thus a virtual ceiling is formed, which is extremely difficult to break through with a head. The fact is that really good and commercially successful texts scare for the majority. They are true, sincere and written so that they can be immediately understood. And the customer was taught to write school essays a little bit wrong.

When a product sucks, the customer often wants to write with clever words about a dynamic young company. Disguise. Add Flera. And monstrous bureaucratic structures are obtained.

Then there is a technical task question. Have you ever tried to write a TZ radiometer? Can not. Because a normal technical assignment implies a dialogue - the writer must, as a journalist, collect material and, as a prospector, obtain bits of facts from him. If you can write a complete TZ with all the necessary facts - you do not need a writer. Just tell it in your own words. You will have much more faith. And then give the proofreader - and publish.

And, to a heap, know, when people become writers? When they have a lot of free time. There was a period when up to half of the market (according to a rough estimate) raised children under 2 years old on maternity leave. And the results were terrible.

So, look what happens:

• Most of the market until recently, wrote for SEO, which caused concomitant biochemical changes in the brain.
• Writers do not see the result of their work almost never and can not distinguish a poorly written text from a well written one.
• Feedback is given by the customer, who does not always understand what works in the text and how. More precisely, even, as a rule, they do not understand at all. This is a design problem “make it prettier”.
• Terms of reference are not set or put through the ass.
• In the mass market there is no understanding of price formation - the rule “more expensive means better” does not work at all, because there are no clear criteria for evaluating texts.

Summary

Everything. In the last 15 minutes, you have learned how to compose at least an accurate and cool technical task for a radiator, as much as possible - to write yourself (because the main gag is the lack of structure). Such a technical project, as it turned out now, can be carried by any performer - and if he has minimal experience, he will already do well. If you do not want to mess around - write your story on the phone and give it to the transcript (translation into the text costs 500-800 rubles per hour of recording). And then give this text to the radio. Most likely, he will simply “comb” it and add just a couple of details.

This will be 20% of the work, which will give 80% of the result.

And then I will talk about what kind of structure is needed, what is the procedure for submission of materials, features of different pieces from product descriptions to thank-you letters and so on. This will improve the result, but the most important thing is to make a good base.

And a couple of links to my other materials:

• Why 98% of the texts on your sites do not work. At all. And how to fix it.
• How I chose a hedgehog copywriter

UPD: immediately following , already about the goods for the online store.