Writing great marketing copy is an art form. Many copywriters struggle with brevity; short form copy that packs a marketing punch isn’t the easiest thing in the world to create. If you have the right copywriting and marketing strategies you will get the attention of potential clients, keep it, and convert them into clients. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Joe Martin.

Joe is a Chicago-based business growth consultant who helps companies align their messaging. He has built and exited two companies, while his innovative ideas around work-life balance have been featured on WGN, FOX, and the TEDx stage.

Brevity is Your Best Friend in Marketing

Joe went to school for design. Part of his responsibility in his professional life after college was marrying the design part of website and marketing material projects with the copywriting part of those projects. He noticed that raising the bar with the copywriting piece often created a bottleneck. Joe would design a beautiful site and then take it to copywriters and ask them to put two sentences on the first page. They would come back with two paragraphs. Ouch.

Joe’s goal with the websites he designed was to make them profitable, not just pretty. But how? You need to start by answering these questions: Who is the person you want to get the attention of and what action do you want them to take? Then it comes down to: What do you need to say to get them to take that action?

How can you get that point across in one sentence? By focusing on one person. One person? Yes, one person and Joe believes one properly crafted sentence, speaking to your ideal target client, can accomplish that.

A question that he gets asked more than anything else is: “How do you decide on who the person you want to talk to is?”

Yes, ultimately, you’re going to have more than one client profile. It’s important to pick just one to get started and craft that sentence for them. The one you want to pick is the one you can get to. It’s the one with the best referral network, the one that is going to spend the most money with you, the one that is going to tell all their friends about you. Most importantly, it’s the one that you actually want to work with! Ask and answer: Who do you best help? Design your messaging for them, start there with one person first.

Speak to Your Idea Client’s Avatar

How do you focus on that one person? By developing your one marketing sentence.

You need to start a conversation with that one person. Figure out what you need to say to them.

This is important: When you want to create a conversation with one person, you’re listening more than you’re talking. You start by discovering the big problem they have which is why they need your help. That’s the way a great sales conversation goes: “This is the problem you have; we solve that problem, and this is how we do it.”

Let’s look at that again:

Number one: “If I understand correctly, this is the problem you have.”

Number two: “Hey! We solve that specific problem!”

Number three: “This is how we do it…”

You Have Their Attention. Now What?

The purpose of websites has changed in recent years. Websites were originally digital storefronts. The change is now that the highest converting websites act more like a digital salesperson than they do a digital storefront. Now it’s figuring out what we need to say to that person to get them to take the next action. Often the action is they need to get on the phone and talk to somebody. In that case you need to make that first call to action to get them to make that call.

If that’s the case the first button shouldn’t say, “our services” and lead to a page of long copy most people won’t read. Let’s not have that first button say, "learn more”. Tell them exactly what you want them to do, which is schedule a call. This is why you should work with us, and this is the action I want you to take. Get them on the phone with a link to schedule a call ...