Copywriting UK | TENFOUR blog

TENFOUR was chuffed to see the Arctic Monkeys second on the bill at this year’s Leeds and Reading Festival, held last weekend. Surely this band must be the sales success of the last 18 months. Ever thought how they might have done it?

Their first single went straight in a Number 1; their album smashed all chart records. Which got us to thinking: what have the Monkeys done so well to get them to where they are today? And can organisations like yours and ours learn something from their style when it comes to our own sales and marketing?

Here are our thoughts on the matter. Let us know what you think.

Being liked

If your business is liked by its customers, then you’re much more likely to be able to sell things to them. According to Sold! (by Steve Martin and Gary Colleran, 2003), having things in common is useful. Four down-to-earth guys writing about day-to-day stuff in northern towns: it works for TENFOUR.

Proof of the pudding

They say the proof of the pudding’s in the tasting. Before the Monkeys were signed they gave their music away online. Would your service or products sell better if you gave your potential customers a taster first? No-one’s going to shy of a good-quality freebie. And word-of-mouth marketing is probably the most successful way of getting quality business leads.

Investing in your customers

Existing customers are worth investing in. As well as giving you those referrals, selling to people who have already done business with you is extremely cost-effective. The Arctic Monkeys kept their early gigs at low prices, even though the touts were making a killing outside. They also signed people up to their website, which was presumably helpful for keeping fans posted about new releases and tours.

Helping people buy from you

Turn ’selling to people’ on its head…how can people buy from you? Giving people a taster might be a start. And making sure you’re front of mind when people are ready to buy is invaluable. Once the Monkeys had a strong following and people were itching to buy the album, the big advertising campaign was everywhere. No doubt there were some record label executives rubbing their hands together behind the scenes, but you get the idea.

Having a good product in the first place

Of course, you can’t get away from this. You have to have a good product or service to sell, and one that’s attractive to your target audience. 360,000 album sales in the first week alone. It can’t all be hype, you know. 

Tip 1 is about writing for the lowest common denominator. What do we mean? Well, if you’re writing for anyone else but yourself, you must take time out to think about your reading public. What sort of knowledge will they have about the topic you’re covering? What are they going to understand, and what will you need to give some explanation time to?

Over the long weekend TENFOUR was wrestling with the technicalities of setting up an online form our copywriting services site. We needed help on CGI scripts (whatever they are). And, without an IT expert in our office, we had to go searching on the web.

After lots of frustration we came across a site that was very helpful. At last, here was an outfit that started at the beginning, gave clear explanations, supplied links to more detail if it was needed, and examples of solutions too. Brilliant. Did it solve our problem. No - we’re artists, not scientists! But we were warmed to think that they were at least trying to help technical idiots like us.

Writing for the lowest common denominator means thinking about the reader who will have the least knowledge, and bearing him or her in mind as you’re drafting each word. You might think writing this way will frustrate the class swots, but it doesn’t have to. Everyone likes clear explanations. And, if you feel like the explanations are taking over a little, extract them from the main text and present them somewhere else: on another page (on the web) or in a highlighted box (in printed material), for instance.

TENFOUR has been wondering how strange it must be to be a Big Brother contestant, stay indoors for a couple of months, then step out and suddenly be recognised by two in three people walking down your High Street. Now imagine being approached in a supermarket with the line “Awright Pete…w#nkers!”. Really, is that any way to treat the winner of Big Brother 7?

Perhaps with the nation’s new acceptance of tourettes, we might see a rise in public swearing? Probably not. But, just a word of warning. Indiscriminate swearing should definitely be used with caution when it comes to drafting corporate materials. Just a piece of professional advice we’re giving out for free.

Ever wondered why you crave chocolate around the time of the month…err, ladies? Find out more in our Lil-lets word spot.

This is the start of a new slot called ‘word spot’. In it we hope to give some examples of wordplay we like. It’s what we’ve seen when we’ve prized ourselves from the computer for a lunchbreak. We’re reminded of Uncle Travelling Sam and the postcards he used to send back to Fraggle Rock - what’s beyond the four walls of the office…

We want to give our first mention to Innocent Drinks bottles. If you ever see or drink one of these fruity characters, take a peek at the back. Each sports a bit of creative writing. Personality in a bottle. And people buy into personalities…you’d better believe it.

Why not check out W#nkers: word of the month. It’s another word spot about Pete from Big Brother. We liked Pete.

There TENFOUR was, watching TV as the World Cup was about to kick off, and a football song by Neil and Christine Hamilton came on the screen. Now, we may come across as being killjoys, and you might say that there are more serious crimes to worry about in Britain. But, a World Cup song by the Hamiltons! John Barnes may not have been the best rapper in 1990’s ‘World in Motion’, but at least he had a good left foot on him.

So, what’s this post all about? Well, the song got TENFOUR to thinking about publicity and PR hooks. In other words, how you can use dates, events and news stories to give your marketing and publicity that extra oomph. So, here are one or two thoughts on the matter.

How can you stand out from the crowd?
If you’ve had the idea, others may have had it too. Believe it or not, some tabloid newspapers have a Valentine’s Day desk because they receive so many press releases around mid-February. If you’re going to hook onto a well-known date or event, how do you make your publicity stand out from the rest? Have you got something quirky that absolutely no one else will have thought of? Or a knockout product deal to rouse interest?

Who’s your target audience?
Going back to Valentine’s Day for a minute, if you’re a car mechanic outfit, perhaps your audience won’t respond overly to links with a date centred on romance – or are we being harsh on mechanics here? Always think whether the hook will relate to your potential readers and, more importantly, the people who might buy from you.

Are there links to your service or product?
As an extension to our last point, publicity can be more than a namecheck. Does your product or service relate naturally to the hook in any way? And, we don’t mean tenuously like this article links to an already finished event like the World Cup. What we’re saying is that if your article, press release or marketing can use a topic to present your product or service as a solution, then you might sell something too.

Can you give a special deal?
A hook can catch someone’s eye, but have you got something to cement their interest? If you’re linking publicity with an event, could you give a special deal for the duration of the event – something like a 20% discount for a limited amount of time?

Go with the mood
During the World Cup every tenth car in London seemed to have an England flag hanging out of its window. The flag companies must have been rubbing their hands together – if they still have hands from the increased production, that is. On the flip side, TENFOUR was left wondering about another company that used the topic of these flags to suggest that hanging a flapping piece of material out of a car window adds drag and uses the equivalent of an extra £1 in a tank of petrol. An ingenious calculation, but did anyone really want to hear this?

Which gets us back to our beef about the Hamiltons. We’ve written an article castigating the couple’s celebration attempts, and so we may be shooting ourselves in the foot by going against the mood. Well, perhaps. But, our point about John Barnes still stands. He was bad at rapping - not ‘bad’ in the Michael Jackson ‘bad’ is ‘good’ sense - but great at football. So, show me footage of Neil Hamilton taking on a Brazillian defence single-handedly and TENFOUR will let him off the record single.