The One Thing All Good Marketing Has In Common

There are about a zillion* different marketing strategies under the sun (*number verified by science). Whether you’re looking to drive traffic to your website, get eyes on your ads, lure people into your store or invite prospective customers to invest in your services, you could go about it any number of ways.

From videos to graphic displays, billboard to digital ads, though, at the end of the day there’s one thing all effective marketing has in common: strong writing.

Here are four solid reasons to invest in great writing when building your marketing strategy.

1. Written content (especially in the form of a blog) is one of the easiest ways to please Google’s algorithm

The algorithm Google uses to decide how to rank different websites and pages is pretty cryptic, to say the least. The entire SEO industry is essentially based around figuring out how best to please that algorithm and encourage the platform to rank certain content more favorably.

You probably know a few of the strategies; keywords and high quality do-follow links from respected sites are a plus.

But with regular updates forever changing the algorithm, “gaming the system” is harder than ever. The one constant? Google likes high quality content.

The number one way to ensure your site remains a consistent source of high-quality content is to update it regularly with useful, well-written, and engaging articles—the type that keep visitors on the page and that Google’s bots can see are more than just keyword dumps.

2. Written content is one of the easiest ways to build trust with prospects

How do you communicate with someone when you meet them in person? If your answer is, “with a series of meaningful nods, winks, and shrugs” well, fine, but for the most part the answer is going to be “with words.”

It’s the case in real life (if you don’t want to be considered a total weirdo), and it’s no different online.

To convert prospects to clients, and to keep clients interested and engaged with the service you have to offer, it’s essential that you build rapport and trust. You need to show them multiple times how your product or service can make their lives easier or better. You need to reassure them of your trustworthiness and professionalism, and ideally, you need to make them like you.

All of this is accomplished through clear, specific writing.

While a graphically-slick website and some professional headshots can go a long way to make a good impression, it’s all likely to come to nothing unless your website is built on persuasive copy that hammers home your value proposition.

This, of course, also extends beyond your website to your other marketing channels like social media, email and so on.

3. It’s more accessible than many other mediums

When was the last time you ran a prime-time network TV commercial? What about hiring a big-name celebrity to be your spokesperson?

Chances are, these things are a bit beyond your budget. Even everyday advertising like PPC or Facebook ads can run up a tab pretty quick. Good writing that accomplishes your marketing objectives, though, doesn’t have to. And once you’ve invested in it, it’s yours to leverage forever.

Using words on paper (or on a screen, as it were), you can create characters, build a plot, hail your customers, share your triumphs, and inspire emotions. You can take on any tone, express any idea, and touch on any nuanced point of advertising you could dream of. It’s essentially limitless, and that makes it an incredibly versatile and malleable tool for marketing.

4. Writing is dynamic; it can be produced on the go and often in a hurry

The world of business is fast-paced and often more than a bit hit-and-miss. As we preach over and over on this blog, good marketing often takes trial and error to get it right.

What this means in practice, is that you need to be fast, action-oriented, and adaptive. You should act quickly, assess the results, adjust, and then act again.

Writing is easily the most dynamic marketing tool out there. If you need to address a specific event in the industry, react to something a competitor has done, or jump onboard a trend, a blog post or press release can be drafted up, published, and shared on social media in hours or less.

Of course, this only works as I’ve described here if you invest in savvy, thoughtful, high-quality writing. It’s easy to take for granted as a nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have, but without it you may find yourself seriously behind the curve in this ever-evolving, ever-more-competitive world of business.