The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth

I bumped into an old school friend a few weeks back. I’d not seen her in about 15 years, and she had no idea what I did for a living.

I write, I said.

“Fiction? Novels?”

No, I replied. I’m a copywriter. I’m no good at fiction. Fiction’s basically just lying for money.

“Isn’t that what you do?”

It’s not the first time I’ve come up against that reaction. Another school friend of mine cut off all contact when I became a Junior Copywriter all those years ago, because “marketing is evil. It’s all lies. It’s immoral, and it’s wrong.”

I blame Bill Hicks.

For some reason, there’s a feeling that all marketing is based on lies. That all a copywriter does is spin out untruths and exaggerations in order to mislead and con an audience out of their hard-earned money.

I think that if your marketing is built on outright lies, you’re going to piss off more customers than you retain.

Good marketing is built on truth and honesty.

Here’s how good marketing works. Tell me what part of this involves making shit up, lying to customers’ faces or otherwise giving yourself over to evil:

1. You identify a problem the lead is facing.
2. You honestly demonstrate how your product can solve that problem.
3. You invite the lead to become a customer.

The only space for lying is in point number two. And that’s entirely beyond the control of the marketer. If a client tells you their product will cure athlete’s foot, and they supply you with testimonials of people who’ve been cured of athlete’s foot by that product, well, you’re acting in good faith.

And if you’re the client looking for help with your marketing, well you’d better make sure your product does what you say it will. Because if it doesn’t, there’s no amount of clever wordplay that’ll stop your customers feeling like they’ve been ripped off.

If you’ve got a great product that does what it’s supposed to, and you want me to help you appeal to potential clients, email enquiries@603copywriting.co.uk and I’ll fit you into my calendar.

If your product doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, then go back and make a better product.

Because marketing only works when we tell the truth.