By Kevin Gault
Brian Clark is best known for being the brain behind Copyblogger.com, the world’s most popular blog for writers. In fact, Copyblogger.com ranks in the top 60 of ALL blogs (pretty good, considering there are 8 million!). Nearly each day, his site has fresh perspectives on writing persuasive and compelling content.
Brian was gracious enough to spare some time from his busy schedule to answer some of my questions.
WhitePaperSource: Tell us about your background with persuasive copywriting. Is it true you started out as a lawyer?
Clark: Yes, I was a practicing attorney, both with large Texas law firms and my own shop. I graduated from law school in 1994 when the Internet came into existence and I was fascinated by it, but it took me until around 1998 to start publishing online.
I started out in email publishing, which is where I developed my emphasis on acquiring subscribers, and that has carried forward because with blogging, subscribers are essential as well. After starting a real estate firm powered by online marketing in 2001, I decided to focus on what I love in 2005, which is doing purely online publishing and marketing.
WhitePaperSource: In your opinion, what are the top trends in online copywriting?
Clark: The most important factor I see in trying to reach people is the trend toward relationship marketing as opposed to the one-shot sales letter approach, and the emergence of multimedia marketing. With direct-mail–style letters on the Web, you can reach a lot of people very cheaply, but that format doesn’t work with everyone—many people won’t even read a long scrolling sales letter.
That’s where blogging, video, podcasting and white papers come in—you provide content that can get someone interested in a product, but it’s not a one-shot sales approach. Over time, after you consistently provide content that has value to people, they’re going to listen when you try to sell them something.
WhitePaperSource: Is there a relationship between persuading and educating people?
Clark: People don’t usually equate the two, but any type of sales information consists of reasons why the prospect will benefit from buying, and that’s education. With a white paper, you’re moving away from high-pressure sales tactics, which is effective because these days people are desensitized to sales pitches—they just tune them out.
White papers let you focus more on an educational approach to marketing, and educational marketing is much more effective in many markets. If people get the background information they need to make a buying decision without feeling that they’re being “sold” to, that’s the most effective marketing there is.
WhitePaperSource: Persuasive writing has often been associated with emotional direct response marketing. White papers are a more business-focused form of writing. Are there any writing strategies you can suggest to persuade and engage readers without emotion?
Clark: No, because it’s a fallacy that anyone makes a purely logical decision. Generally, people make decisions based on subconscious emotion and then they justify or rationalize those decisions with logic. So emotion plays a part in all marketing, and a good white paper touches on emotional themes.
A white paper becomes more persuasive the more the writer can see the emotional motivations in that particular business situation. Then you can speak to those motivations without straying out of character for the white paper.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini does a great job of illustrating how we really make almost instantaneous emotional decisions that we then seek to justify with our rational minds, and business decisions are no exception. So a good white paper has to provide both the trigger point and then the logical support. I’d say that the logical support has to be much stronger than in a consumer situation, because business decisions are often held up to outside scrutiny.
WhitePaperSource: Do you have any recommended resources for our readers on this topic?
Clark: If you’re interested in copywriting and creating more compelling content, you can subscribe to my site, www.copyblogger.com. The foundation of persuasion in text, audio and video is the same—it’s the words you use—and that’s what Copyblogger is all about.
There’s also a lot of other information out there about strategies for using online video, podcasting and other media that can be very helpful. Just start Googling and you’ll have material for days.
