The Funnel

I haven’t blogged in a while. I apologize for that. Though nobody has left comments, I know people do read this. When I write an entry, I want to make sure it’s relevant – and inspired.

Tonight I was working on some sales materials for an upcoming business expo. I bought a booth, and it’s going to be an adventure just preparing for the thing. I need new brochures! Pens! Taglines! Gimmicks!

While brainstorming, I thought about the last few meetings I’ve had with prospects and clients. One of them, a graphic designer, asked me to name my specialty. On the spot, I had to decide what it was I did best – brochures? Articles? Advertising copy? I knew that whatever I named would be how he remembered me. He’d think of me as “the newsletter writer” or “the brochure writer” and I didn’t want to be pigeonholed.

Sometimes specializing is a good thing, mind you. But there is such a thing as being too specific. I don’t do graphic design, photography, telemarketing, grant writing, or any number of tasks marginally related to copywriting. I can subcontract them and manage them, but I don’t do them myself. When it comes to copywriting jobs, though, why can’t I “specialize” in more than one field? Clients need more than one thing written, usually, and it gets boring just doing press releases or sales letters all the time.

So what I told her was that I specialize in “distillery.”

When we were in high school and college, we were told to write a 2,000-word essay on the topic of choice. In order to minimize our research and maximize our grade, we learned to be verbose. We were proud of it, in fact. We threw in $100 words to impress the professors, plus lots of extra modifiers and adverbs. As we progressed through our degrees, we learned the “educated” writing style, which approaches excruciating detail.

I did it too.

But the real world works differently. People don’t read unless they’re hooked into doing it.

In the marketing world, you’re not “graded” on how many words you write, but how few. If your message is 20 words long, can you say it in 10? Condense that to 5 words, and you’ve got a chance of being noticed. A message that’s more complex, such as a news article, has to conform to available space. Before you get too comfortable with brevity, though, consider that the small size doesn’t mean it’s short on information. A good article, brochure, tagline, or any other real-world marketing piece is like a can of sardines or a good cigar – packed with substance.

Most of the time, the substance isn’t a problem – it’s the packing. One marketing employee can come up with pages of stuff, and five give you more. Smart people have a lot to say. I’m the funnel that you pour it into – and the condensed message comes out.

The message isn’t just condensed, but customized, optimized, and targeted. It’s about crushing a pound of carbon into a tiny diamond.

Tagline: Words That Work As Hard As You Do.