My Number 1 Copywriting And Online Marketing Tip – Be Honest

As online writers, designers and marketers we are being forced to become more and more transparent by three powerful, converging forces.
Force #1. Trust of corporations and individual professionals has never been lower.
Remember 2008? The greed and dishonesty of many large corporations was revealed on a scale it would have been hard to even imagine.
The same goes for individual professionals, like Bernard Madoff. Whether you work for a corporation or for yourself, don’t expect people to take your honesty for granted. More and more, until they get to know you, people are likely to start with a default position of mistrust. Your job is to earn your public’s trust, step by step.
Honesty is a good first step.
Force #2. An economy in recession.
As the recession deepens, people will think more and more carefully about every purchase they make. Just because your brand and your advertising efforts have done the heavy lifting for you in the past, don’t expect them to carry you very far into the future. People will be very careful what they spend this year. They will buy what they need, but less of what they want.
Force #3. The rise of social networking leaves you with nowhere to hide.
One of the points I made in my book, Net Words, way back in 2001, was that the online environment shifts control of one’s brand from the hands of the marketing department into the hands of your customers. Back then I was thinking of the power of forums, discussion lists and blogs. Today we are seeing an explosion of social networking activity, all of it enabling regular people to read, discuss and create content relating to companies, products and services.
Your customers can now share their views of both your company and its products or services. What you say no longer matters very much. What they say has a great deal more influence. While both companies and individual professionals are still being painfully slow to “get it”, the control of their brand and reputation now lies almost totally within the hands of their prospects and customers.
If you are dishonest or less than transparent in your dealings with your public, you will be found out and exposed. If you exaggerate the benefits or value of your products or services, people will laugh at you, publicly. If you fail to deliver on your promises, the news will spread fast. You are under a microscope. Millions of people are watching you. Every misstep will be revealed.
All 3 forces combined…
Your prospect is increasingly distrustful of companies and professionals, scared by the recession and careful about how he or she spends every penny. You can bet that he or she is going to reach out to social networks and price comparison sites to make sure that each dollar is spent wisely. Will your company, products and services survive this level of scrutiny? Will your marketing messages ring true? Will they BE true?
Concluding thoughts…
There was a time when as copywriters and marketers we could frame and adjust the “truth” in an almost infinite variety of ways. In fact, the framing of a particular slant on the truth was at the heart of our skill as marketing communicators. We got away with it because we used to reach our customers one at a time. Our prospects and customers were isolated from one another. They couldn’t share their opinions and experiences.
But that has all changed. Our audience is scared of the recession, as are we. They are distrustful of companies and professionals, with good reason. And they no longer have to take our word for anything. They can simply tap into their favorite social network and discover the real truth behind what we claim.
Are you ready?