I don’t believe in charging hourly rates for my work. First of all, real value can’t be measured in hours – only in quality and results. Paying hourly rates for creative work is upside-down and counterproductive. Sometimes they’re even a ripoff for the client.

Suppose you needed heart surgery. Would you shop around for the lowest price? Of course not. You’d want the very best quality care available. It’s the same with your marketing. You want the most attractive, persuasive, compelling website (or brochure, sales letter, etc.) you can get. Now honestly, do you believe you’ll get the quality you demand from a less-expensive, less-experienced, less-knowledgeable provider? Are you crossing your fingers and hoping for Nordstrom quality at Wal-Mart prices?

Let’s go back to your heart surgery again. (Don’t worry, I promise you’ll be feeling better soon.) OK, you need a certain surgical procedure. Suppose one of the surgeons at your hospital had performed hundreds of these procedures over her 20+ year career. Because of her experience, she can open you up, fiddle around in there, and zip you closed again in, say, two hours. A less-experienced surgeon at the same hospital might need 12 hours to provide the same quality.

If hourly rates are the metric you use, the journeyman surgeon would be paid six times more than the expert! Am I the only one who thinks that’s just backwards?

Look at it this way: Would you feel cheated if you were forced to pay more because your writer was slow (or, considering writers’ reputations, hung over)? Likewise, should an expert be penalized because he’s focused and fast?

One more thing. Shouldn’t you be able to call up your writer/designer/ webmaster with a question, idea or concern — without running up your bill? When you and your service provider agree on a flat rate for a project, those issues don’t come up. You can call anytime without re-starting the clock.

In other words, look for creative talent who charge like doctors — not lawyers.

photo credit: Robbie-73

Sometimes we forget that it’s OUR job to write letters, emails and business communications so they’re clear and understandable. It’s not the poor reader’s job to try and puzzle out what we meant. That way, my friend, lies heartbreak (and possibly Chapter 11).

Author and blogger David Silverman offers some good advice on how to make your emails more readable. Short answer: edit, revise, rewrite. Or to paraphrase him:

• Make it shorter.
• Stay focused. Delete anything off-topic. Keep it tight.
• Try to make just one important point per email. The others may get overlooked.
• Delete redundancies and repetition. (Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department)
• Use numbers and be specific. E.g., not “way behind schedule” but “3 weeks late.”
• Edit it for clarity and length. Keep it brief.
• Never email anything written while you’re in an emotional state. Sleep on it first.
• Did I mention “make it shorter?”

I might add, “Make it clear what you want them to do next.”

Silverman might go a teeny bit overboard when he suggests the number of revisions you make depends on how many people will receive the email. His take:

1 to 5 recipients = 2 to 4 revisions
5 to 10 recipients = 8 to 12 revisions
Company-wide or to Executive Committee = 30 to 50 revisions

Yikes, at that rate, you might be able to finish only a few emails every day. (Now that’s something to look forward to…)

Zone Alarm has big news about Google:

INC. Magazine is out with “15 Business Buzzwords We Don’t Want to Hear.” As a copywriter and lover of language, I agree that these buzz babies might have been fresh and vibrant once, but that time has passed. Now they’re like fingernails screeching across a chalkboard.*

Is your favorite pet peeve among the words that need to be retired pronto?

“Actionable.” “Authenticity.” “Best of breed” (animal husbandry, anyone?). “Disintermediate,” as INC points out, “has the same number of syllables as ‘cut out the middleman’ with none of the clarity.” ZING!

Then there are bastardized non-words like “incentivize” (ack!) and “synergy.” And my longtime personal skin-crawler: “solution,” which died of overuse a decade ago and cries out for  decent burial.  [Question: If your "solution" is a liquid, does that make it a "solution solution?"]

The article also lists 15 buzzwords they still like, including “angel” and “frictionless.” But give them time. In a year or two, I’m sure we’ll be sick of them, too.

* Does anyone under 40 even know what chalkboards are? Fingernails clawed across a whiteboard just can’t duplicate the chalkboard’s cringe factor.

“I can help you.”

Simple, isn’t it? Your prospective customers don’t need more information. Chances are, they’re drowning in information. And they sure don’t want a sales pitch.

What they really want is advice. Guidance. Expert help from someone they know and trust. Someone who has demonstrated that s/he understands their problem or need, and has a solution. Maybe it’s not even the perfect solution. But it’s a solution, and that’s more than they’ve got right now.

Remember, most prospects want to buy. It’s fun to buy. Besides, they want to solve their problem or satisfy their desire, then get back to whatever they were doing before.

When you look at it that way, marketing and copywriting become pretty simple. It’s not about what you’ve got. It’s about what they get.

What customers really want to know is, “Can you help me?” So four simple words can and should form the foundation of your marketing message:

“I can help you.”

Then just tell them how you’ll do it. Voila! You’ve turned a browser into a buyer.