I think I’ve mentioned one of the clubs I run at Ecademy. The Words Sell! Why don’t yours? Club is where I give free copywriting advice to Ecademy members.

After running it for a few weeks, I’ve found one area of problems that overrides all others.

Any guesses as to what that might be?

Well, it’s not strictly down to writing itself.

People don’t know how to structure their work – especially when it’s for a Web site. Quite often all the material is there, and even the basic messages appear to have been worked out.

But then all this hard work is thrown away by burying the interesting stuff under the boring – OK, less interesting – stuff.

Business owners seem genuinely convinced that the thing people want to read most when they come to a site is something about the company. As I write this, I wonder what they look for when they go to a Web site – I’ll try asking that question, and see what people say.

Is this purely human nature? We all love talking about ourselves. Or is it human nature reinforced by so much bad marketing, where we’ve pushed portentous corporate brochures into the clammy hands of our poor victims – even the marketing term is targets, I wonder what that says?

Those are the kind of brochures that end up in the bin – how many times have I been told ‘I always put brochures in the bin’? It’s hardly surprising, considering what most want to tell us.

And it’s the same with Web sites – so many people are wanting to give their visitors (a much nicer, more human name, preferred by my friend Paul Silver) that same old boring waffle.

Think, visitors to your house. Don’t you lay in some food and drink you know they’d like, to make them feel at home? You certainly wouldn’t let Great Uncle Sid loose on your visitors with his 8mm movies of Southend in the 50s.

The same kind of mindset needs to be applied to our marketing communications.

Related posts:

1. Many people still fall down on marketing basics
2. Maybe I do see why people enthuse about SmartCars
3. Al Ries on plain language